R&D: Elliptical Plasmonic Near-Field Transducer and V-shape Waveguide Designs for HAMR

Optics Continuum has published an article written by Mugahid Ali, Frank Bello,School of Physics, CRANN, and AMBER, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland, Nicolás Abadía,School of Physics and Astronomy and Institute for Compound Semiconductors, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK, Fumin Huang, School of Mathematics and Physics, Queens University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, UK, and John Donegan, School of Physics, CRANN, and AMBER, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Abstract: “We proposed a new elliptical near-field transducer (NFT) and V-shaped waveguide design, which provides multiple pathways to control and optimise the thermal performance of the optical delivery paths for heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). The principle of operation of the design utilises the properties of the localised surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of the metallic elliptical NFT. We demonstrated a peak temperature in the recording media normalised to the incident laser power (T_Media/P_In) ranging from ∼ 128 K/mW to more than 181 K/mW. We also achieved tunable thermal gradients as high as 23.0 K/nm and 18.7 K/nm in the recording media’s down-track and cross-track directions, respectively. Moreover, we exemplified that the inevitable temperature rise in the plasmonic NFT could be tuned to remain under 400 K for maximum heat in the recording media > 700 K. The best thermal performance obtained corresponded to the aspect ratio of the antenna a/b ∼ 0.89 with the minor axis of the antenna a = 85 nm.“

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