A Facile Approach of Fabricating Ultra-Thin Wear Resistant Si/SiN_x/C Overcoats for Magnetic Tape Recording Heads

Magnetic tape recording is one of the oldest data storage technologies, and it is still used today due to its low cost and long data storage life. Magnetic tape recording is a contact recording technology, where a thin flexible magnetic tape medium is pulled across an Al₂O₃/TiC (AlTiC) recording head surface at a high velocity while in direct physical contact with each other. As a result, one of the inherent problems faced in magnetic tape recording systems is an increase in the magnetic spacing over time with prolonged usage, due to continuous wear of the tape bearing head surface, which in turn leads to a deterioration of the magnetic readback signal [1]. The increase in the magnetic spacing at the head-tape interface can be due to several factors, such as pole tip recession (PTR), accumulation of wear debris on the head and surface roughness of the head and tape medium. Out of these factors, PTR is a major contributor to the magnetic spacing loss, due to a higher rate of wear of the softer magnetic read and write poles at the head-tape interface [2].