Programmable Air Bearing Sliders

Programmable air bearing sliders permit close proximity or contact recording via their ability to change flying height on demand. This permits them to be flown close to the disk during a read or write operation and away from it the rest of the time. The design of the sliders is described along with simulations that show the tunable nature of the air bearing. The velocity dependence of the slider is analyzed and a simple solution to reduce it is proposed. © 1991 IEEE