Abstract: An optimal design scheme for determining geometrical configuration of pico slider is proposed in order to improve the areal magnetic density of hard disk drives and get better steady-state performance. An optimal model is formulated to minimize the variation of flying-height and roll angle from the target values when the slider is at inner diameter, middle diameter and outer diameter of the disk. At the same time, the dimension of the slider and the pitch angle should be constrained in a suitable bound. The method of simulated annealing is utilized to find global optimum solution. Optimization results show that the new slider has lower flying-height and better steady-state characteristics. By comparison of the steady-state performance the new slider and the initial one under the work cases with different rotating speeds of the disk, it is demonstrated that the rotating speed of the disk has a great impact on the optimization results.

Key words: Air bearing surface, Configuration optimization, Pico slider, Simulated annealing