Micromechanics applications in data storage

Abstract

High rate of areal density growth rate enables the reduction in cost per MB and increasing demand for data storage. Micromechanics is soon likely to be needed to accommodate the increased mechanical position precision needed for reading and writing data. Two examples will be described. A microactuator can be used as the fine actuator of a two-stage actuator servo system for very high bandwidth magnetic head slider positioning. This device is batch-fabricated metal structure using high-aspect-ratio lithography and stencil plating. The fabrication process and characteristics will be described. As a second example, micromachined atomic force microscope (AFM) probes are used to generate and detect fine pits on the surface of a polymer disk. An areal density of 25 Gb/in2 is achieved with a data reading rate of above 1 Mb/s. A very low mass (0.3 ng) silicon nitride AFM probe has been used in this study, and the fabrication and performance are described.