A Heat Transfer Study in the Head Disk Interface and an Insight to Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording Design

Understanding the heat transfer in the head disk interface (HDI) in the heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is important. In this paper, we report on a series of experiments to study the heat transfer in the HDI using the perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) heads and media. The temperature increase of the embedded contact sensor (ECS) and the thermal fly-height control (TFC) heater was compared in the fly setup and non-fly setup. A series of simulations were performed to explain the results. We show that the design of the air bearing surface can significantly affect the pressure distribution in the read/write transducer area, and thereby affect the convective heat transfer coefficient.