HAMR Performance and Integration Challenges

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is a fast evolving technology, and has been established as the next enabler of higher areal density in magnetic recording. After achieving high areal density capability, HAMR drive integration was recently demonstrated. In this paper, we discuss some of the recent learning from component performance and drive integration. We identify a key challenge in HAMR integration: erasure due to thermal background heating. The background heating was introduced to improve near-field transducer reliability and reduce laser power requirement. We present experimental and modeling data on the impact of thermal background, both in the cross-track (adjacent-track erasure) and down-track (self-erasure) dimensions.