KR20020069516A - flying slider head and method for fabricating the same - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: A floating type sliding head and a method for fabricating the same are provided to improve the transient characteristics and the position control precision by minimizing and lightening pickup slider head parts. CONSTITUTION: A floating type sliding head includes a substrate(1) having an opening part(3) and a plurality of hexagonal trenches(2), an SIL(Solid Immersion Lens;7) mounted to the opening part of the substrate, a supporting pad formed below a bottom surface(4) of the substrate for supporting the SIL, and an air-bearing surface formed on the lower surface of the substrate for floating the substrate by forming a near field clearance from the disc and having tapered edges(5) inclined by a predetermined angle at front portions and rails(6).

Description

Floating slider head and method for fabricating the same

The present invention relates to a floating slider head for use in a near field optical system and a method of manufacturing the same.

Recently, in order to meet the demand for clearer image information and the demand for small, light and large-capacity information storage devices essential for personal information terminals, a dramatic increase in information recording density has been required.

As a technical countermeasure, the recording density of magnetic information recording apparatuses such as a hard disk used as an auxiliary storage unit of a computer continues to be improved, and the recording density of optical recording apparatuses such as CDs and DVDs is increased. Research is ongoing.

However, not only high recording density but also data access speed for recording and reproducing information must be increased in the required performance of a large-capacity information storage device.

In addition, an increase in data recording density means a reduction in data unit bit size, and correspondingly, a data track pitch is reduced.

Therefore, the tracking accuracy of the pickup head for recording / reproducing must also be increased in response to an increase in recording density.

As such, miniaturization and weight reduction of the pickup apparatus is essential to improve the tracking speed and accuracy.

Variables that determine the transient characteristics of the pickup device include the spring constant of the suspended pickup device, the effective mass and the damping constant of the pickup device, and the like.

In general, the response speed of a mechanical system is proportional to the resonant frequency of the system, and the resonant frequency of the structure is expressed by the following equation.

Where f _r is the resonant frequency of the structure, k is the elastic modulus of the structure with respect to the direction of vibration, and M is the mass of the structure.

As such, in the case of a structure used for near field light or a magnetic information storage device, the spring constant k, which is a modulus of elasticity, is constant. Therefore, if the mass M of the structure is reduced, a response speed suitable for high speed tracking may be obtained.

Therefore, in the future, studies to increase the tracking response speed of the pickup apparatus by controlling variables that determine response characteristics such as mass and elastic modulus of the pickup apparatus should be conducted.

An object of the present invention is to provide a floating slider head and a method of manufacturing the same that can increase the tracking response speed of the pickup device by reducing the size and weight of the slider head of the pickup device.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a floating slider head and a method of manufacturing the same, in which an air-bearing surface structure is integrated to increase the precision of position control.

1A and 1B are front and rear perspective views showing the floating slider head of the present invention incorporating an air-bearing surface.

2 is a view showing a system of a high density optical information storage device applying the floating slider head according to the present invention.

3A and 3B are plan views showing floating slider heads according to the present invention.

Figures 4a to 4h is a view showing the manufacturing process of the floating slider head along the line A-B of Figure 3b of the present invention

Explanation of symbols for main parts of the drawings

1 substrate 2 trench

3: opening 4,11: bottom thin film

5: taper edge 6: rail

7: SIL8: support pad

9,12: transparent thin film 11: SIL

13 mask film 21 light source

22: collimation lens 23: light splitter

24: mirror 25, 27: focusing lens

26: light analyzer 28: light detector

30: slider suspension 50: optical disc

100: slider head

The floating slider head according to the present invention includes a substrate having one opening and a plurality of trenches, a solid immersion lens (SIL) mounted to the opening of the substrate, a support pad formed at a lower surface of the substrate, and supporting the SIL; And an air-bearing surface formed on the bottom surface of the substrate to support the substrate.

Here, the trench has a regular hexagonal shape, and a transparent thin film supporting the SIL is formed in the center region of the support pad.

Then, the air-bearing surface is formed at the edge of the substrate and the front portion is made of a tapered edge inclined at an angle.

In addition, the method of manufacturing a floating slider head according to the present invention comprises a first step of sequentially forming the air-bearing surface bottom thin film and the transparent thin film on the upper and lower surfaces, respectively, and by patterning the transparent thin film on the lower surface of the substrate A second step of forming a bearing surface and a support pad, a third step of forming and patterning a mask film on the transparent thin film on the upper surface of the substrate to expose the transparent thin film in a predetermined region, and the exposed transparent thin film and the substrate below A fourth step of forming an opening to expose the support pad by etching the transparent thin film and the substrate in the region where the support pad is formed by etching a plurality of trenches to a predetermined depth, and removing the remaining mask layer and air-bearing surface The fifth step of mounting the SIL on the support pad of the opening after cutting the edge of the edge to have a predetermined angle of inclination It is made, including.

Here, the trench and the opening are etched by anisotropic dry etching.

The present invention configured as described above is capable of high-speed navigation by forming fine trenches by using micromachining techniques to reduce the weight of the slider head, and the air-bearing surface is integrated to finely adjust the near-field microgap by the air flotation method. It is suitable for high density optical storage devices.

Other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of embodiments taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

Referring to the accompanying drawings, preferred embodiments of the present invention having the features as described above are as follows.

The concept of the present invention is to integrate air-bearing surfaces and to remove functionally unnecessary parts with silicon micromachining techniques to reduce the mass of the slider head to improve the response speed of the pick-up device and to improve position control accuracy.

1A and 1B are front and rear perspective views showing the floating slider head of the present invention incorporating an air-bearing surface.

As shown in FIGS. 1A and 1B, the slider head 100 of the present invention has an opening 3 in which a solid immersion lens 7 is mounted on a substrate 1, and a honeycomb around it. Shaped fine trenches 2 are formed.

Here, the reason for forming the honeycomb trenches 2 is that the weight of the slider head 100 can be considerably reduced while maintaining the mechanical rigidity of the substrate 1 so that the response of the tracking device with the slider head is mounted. Because you can increase the speed.

The reason why the trench shape is a regular hexagonal honeycomb shape is that the density or fill factor of the trench can be the highest and the weight of the slider head can be minimized.

Here, as an example, the trench 2 is etched into a honeycomb of a regular hexagon, but the weight can be greatly reduced even by etching into another shape such as a polygon, a circle, or an oval.

In addition, an air bearing surface bottom thin film 4 is formed on the lower surface of the substrate 1, and a support pad 8 protrudes from the bottom thin film 4 in a region where the opening 3 is formed, and a support pad is provided. The transparent thin film 9 which supports the SIL 7 is formed in the center part of (8).

In addition, an air-bearing surface is formed on the lower surface of the substrate 1 to maintain the near-field gap with the information storage disk by hydrodynamic flotation. Is composed of a tapered edge 5 and a rail 6 portion of which the front portion is inclined at an angle.

2 is a view showing a system of a high density optical information storage device using the floating slider head according to the present invention.

The operation of the pickup for the optical information storage device will be described below according to the optical path.

First, an input laser beam radiated from a laser light source 21 such as a laser diode is converted into parallel light by a collimator 22, and is reflected by a mirror 24 to change an optical path so that the primary focusing lens of the near field optical system. It penetrates 25 and is irradiated to SIL of the ultralight small slider head 100 by this invention.

Subsequently, the input light passes through the SIL suspended from the surface of the optical disk 50 to the ultra-fine gap of the near field area by the tri pad-type air-bearing surface shape integrated on the lower surface of the slider head 100, so that the near field light A part of the input light which is irradiated to the optical disk 50 and reflected from the optical disk 50 passes through the optical path, passes through the SIL, the primary focusing lens 25, and passes through the mirror 24 and the optical splitter 23 to the optical analyzer. Incident on (26), it reaches the photodetector 28 through the focusing lens (27).

If the optical disk 50 is a magneto-optical substrate, it detects an optical signal in the form of a Kerr rotation angle, and in the case of a phase change substrate, the intensity of reflected light By detecting the optical signal in the form, it is possible to obtain recorded information.

This process relates to a process of reproducing optical information recorded on an optical disk or determining a tracking signal, and is suitable for the magneto-optical or phase change recording method of the optical disk in addition to the above process when recording arbitrary optical information on the optical disk. Digital information corresponding to "0" or "1" of the optical information is recorded.

3A and 3B are plan views showing a floating slider head according to the present invention, FIG. 3A is a plan view showing an upper part of the slider head, and FIG. 3B is a plan view showing a lower part of the slider head.

Each component is as described above, it can be seen that the gimbal portion of the suspension and the alignment pattern for assembly assembly 10 for the joint assembly is formed at the center of gravity of the upper surface of the slider.

4A to 4H are views illustrating a manufacturing process of the floating slider head along the AB line of FIG. 3B of the present invention. First, as shown in FIG. 4A, each of the upper and lower surfaces of a substrate 1 such as a silicon wafer is shown. The air-bearing surface bottom thin film 11 is formed by oxidation, vapor deposition, or the like.

Here, the bottom thin film 11 is to enhance the substrate adhesion force of the thin film that will constitute the transparent thin film and tri pad air-bearing surface shape for SIL mounting in a later process, and to compensate for the residual stress. .

Subsequently, as shown in FIG. 4B, a low stress transparent thin film 12 is formed on the bottom thin film 11, and as shown in FIG. 4C, the transparent thin film 12 of the lower surface of the substrate 1 is patterned to be formed. Form a pad air-bearing surface.

The tri pad air-bearing surface consists of a rail 6 of the air-bearing surface supporting the substrate 1 and a support pad 8 supporting the SIL.

As shown in FIG. 4D, a hard mask layer 13, such as a photoresist film or a metal, is formed and patterned on the transparent thin film 12 on the upper surface of the substrate 1 to expose the transparent thin film of a predetermined region. As shown in FIG. 5, the exposed transparent thin film 12 and the substrate 1 under the substrate are etched to a predetermined depth to form a plurality of trenches 2 in a honeycomb shape, and at the same time, an opening part that is a light inlet and a SIL assembly guide ( 3) form.

Here, the etching method uses an anisotropic dry etching method such as plasma ion etching.

In some cases, in addition to dry etching, a suitable processing method such as wet etching may be used.

Subsequently, as shown in FIG. 4F, the bottom thin film 12 of the opening 3 is removed to expose the transparent thin film 12, which is the support pad 8, and the remaining mask film 13 is removed. A plurality of slider 100 elements formed on a substrate 1 of the substrate 1 are cut out in individual slider units and separated into a slider element having a chip shape.

That is, the separation into the individual slider elements can be facilitated by dicing or the like, which is widely used in the semiconductor package process.

Then, as shown in FIG. 4G, a tapered edge 5 which cuts the edge of the air-bearing surface of the slider separated by individual elements to have an inclination of the slider to provide a flotation force of the slider. To process.

Finally, as shown in FIG. 4H, the SIL 7 is aligned on the light inlet and the opening of the SIL assembly guide and bonded to the transparent thin film 9 supporting the SIL, thereby miniaturizing the ultra-lightweight near field SIL optical slider head 100. To complete.

At this time, the matching of the SIL 7 and the SIL supporting transparent thin film 9 uses a transparent epoxy or the like bonded with a refractive index.

The present invention can improve the response speed and position control accuracy required for the high density information storage device by miniaturizing and reducing the weight of the pickup slider head component of the high density near field SIL optical system, and the pickup of the high density optical information storage device and the high density magnetic recording device. The device can also be applied to a lightweight slider utilizing a honeycomb trench structure.

In addition, by using the semiconductor device manufacturing process and the micromachining technology in the manufacturing process, it is expected that the processing accuracy can be increased and the mass productivity can be improved.

Those skilled in the art will appreciate that various changes and modifications can be made without departing from the technical spirit of the present invention.

Therefore, the technical scope of the present invention should not be limited to the contents described in the embodiments, but should be defined by the claims.

Claims (7)

A substrate having one opening and a plurality of trenches; A solid immersion lens (SIL) mounted in the opening of the substrate; A support pad formed on a lower surface of the substrate to support the SIL; And, And an air-bearing surface formed on the bottom surface of the substrate to support the substrate. The floating slider head of claim 1, wherein the trench has a regular hexagon shape. The floating slider head of claim 1, wherein a transparent thin film supporting the SIL is formed in a central region of the support pad. The floating slider head of claim 1, wherein the air-bearing surface is formed at an edge of the substrate, and the front portion is inclined at an angle. In a method of manufacturing a floating slider head having a solid immersion lens (SIL) and an air-bearing surface supported by a support pad, A first step of sequentially forming the air-bearing surface bottom thin film and the transparent thin film on upper and lower surfaces of the substrate, respectively; Patterning the transparent thin film on the bottom surface of the substrate to form the air-bearing surface and the support pad; Forming and patterning a mask layer on the transparent thin film on the upper surface of the substrate to expose the transparent thin film of a predetermined region; A fourth trench for forming a plurality of trenches by etching the exposed transparent thin film and the lower substrate to a predetermined depth, and simultaneously forming an opening to expose the support pad by etching the transparent thin film and the substrate in the region where the support pad is formed. step; And, And a fifth step of removing the remaining mask film, cutting the edge of the air-bearing surface to have a predetermined angle, and mounting the SIL on the support pad of the opening. Type slider head manufacturing method. The method of claim 5, wherein in the fourth step, The trench and the opening is a floating slider head manufacturing method characterized in that the etching by anisotropic dry etching. The method of claim 5, wherein in the fourth step, Floating slider head manufacturing method characterized in that the trench is etched in a regular hexagonal shape.