New materials in rigid disks

摘要

For several years the thin-film rigid disk, as used in Winchesterndrives, has played a leading role in the exploitation of new materials.nThis is the case not only as far as the magnetic layer is concerned, butnalso in all the other components of the disk's complex compositenstructure. The ever-increasing demands placed on the disk to satisfyntribological, durability and reliability criteria place emphasis on allnthe layers which contribute to the head-disk interface, and that doesnnot only mean the layer at the air surface, but can involve those buriedndeep within the disk and their interfaces. Material properties must benlinked with carefully optimised surface topography to meet the needs fornlow friction and wear in the contact start-stop process, when the headnlands on the disk, together with resistance to damage from corrosionnphenomena to give long life and high integrity data-storage. Performancenin all these areas must be improved while, at the same time, thenfundamental magnetic recording parameters of the disk must be able tonachieve the exacting specifications placed by disk-drive designers fornhigher areal density of recorded information and improvednsignal-to-noise