Computational and Experimental Investigation of Contact Detect Response of a Head-Integrated Thermistor on HAMR vs. PMR Media

The migration from perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) to heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) in the hard disc drive (HDD) industry brings unique challenges for head-disc contact detection (CD) and with precisely setting head-disc clearance. In this study we provide numerical model calculations of a head-integrated thermistor’s electric resistance as a function of head-disc clearance and compare the modeled results with measurements of thermistor resistance for heads flying over PMR and HAMR media. Such comparisons serve to assess the accuracy of the modeling techniques and to understand the impact that the media type plays in CD capability of the head-integrated thermistor.