The effect of write current on thermal flying height control sliders with dual heater/insulator elements

The effect of write induced pole tip protrusion on the magnetic spacing of the head/disk interface has to be taken into consideration as flying heights approach the spacing regime of a few nano-meters. Thermal flying height control (TFC) sliders are presently in common use in hard disk drives to control the flying height at the read/write element during drive operations. In this paper the flying characteristics of TFC sliders with dual heater/insulator elements are investigated. Simulation results are shown for situations where the write current is “on” and where the write current is “off”. The effect of design parameters of two heater/insulator elements is studied to optimize the performance of TFC slider.