LAUSR

The heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology is expected to increase the areal density of the hard disk drives up to 10 Tb/in.2 This paper presents a numerical thermal study of near field transducers (NFTs), a key component in HAMR. Both an electromagnetic and a heat transfer model are included. Instead of assuming a heat transfer model across the nanoscale gap, we performed a parameter sweep of various models and investigated all the possible results. We found that if the heat transfer coefficient across the head-disk interface (HDI) is high, the carbon overcoat on the head is critical for protecting the NFT from excess heat. The heat flux across the HDI and the thermal efficiency of the NFT are also investigated to better understand the heat transfer mechanism in the HAMR system.