Application of megasonic cleaner to sub-micron particles of SIL optical flying head

As the demand for large capacity storage drives has increased, the flying height of near-field recording (NFR) sliders becomes as small as 100 nm for super high storage density. Accordingly contamination problems have been a concern of information storage industry because it may cause a serious damage to solid immersion lens (SIL) of optical flying head. Sub-micro contaminants in air bearing of the NFR slider may affect the flyability and stability of the optical slider. in addition, the cleaning of small particles becomes more difficult as the contaminant particle size decreases because the adhesion force increases very much as the particle size decreases. Recently developed high-frequency ultrasonic (megasonic) cleaning technique have made it possible to remove sub-micron particles less than 100 nm without surface erosion and many remarkable results have been reported. In this paper, the megasonic technique is applied and tested for the cleaning of the flying head of NFR drive. 1 MHz ultrasound with maximum 100 W was used to remove polystyrene latex (PSL) particles and alumina particles deposited on the surface of the slider. Effective cleaning performance was observed without any damages on the slider surface using optical microscope and AFM at different ultrasonic energy levels and cleaning times.