Wireless Suspension Technologies

The storage industry’s progress in increasing the capacity of hard disk drives by implementing MR and GMR recording technologies is mirrored by its advances in miniaturizing the size of magnetic recording head sliders. Read-Rite has successfully made the transition from nano to pico form factor in its wafer fabrication, slider manufacturing and HGA assembly processes.

The evolution towards smaller slider form factors has challenged the HGA assembly processes in many different ways such as head bonding and wiring. The company is currently developing an automated process for attaching recording heads to suspension gimbals and has successfully implemented two wireless technologies into its HGA processes. These include Trace Suspension Assembly (TSA) and Flex on Suspension (FOS).

To this date Read-Rite has made significant progress in developing new technologies such as microactuator and Chip on Base (COB), for high areal density and data rate applications. In addition to the full characterization of commercially available HGAs with microactuators, Read-Rite has designed a unique co-located piezoelectric based HGA with microactuator. The COB activity is focussed on testing 2nd generation preamp chips geared for data rates above 600 Mb/sec.