Hard disk drive manufacturing process flow analysis notes

The ever-growing interest in hard disk drives with greater storage density has motivated a technology change from continuous magnetic media to patterned media hard drives, that are likely to be implemented later on decades of hard disk drives to supply data storage at densities exceeding 10¹²&enspbits/in.². Step and expensive imprint lithography (S-FIL) technologies have been used to pattern the hard disk substrates. This short article talks about the infrastructure needed to allow S-FIL in high-volume manufacturing, namely, fabrication of master templates, template replication, high-volume imprinting with precisely controlled residual layers, and dual-on the sides imprinting. Imprinting of disks is shown with substrate throughput presently up to 180 disks/h (dual on the sides). These processes are put on patterning hard disk substrates with both discrete tracks and bit-patterned designs.

The authors are grateful for that assistance supplied by Zhaoning Yu and Justin Hwu (Seagate Technology), Shuaigang Xiao (Seagate Research), Gary Doyle, Steve Manley, Chris Johnson, and Paul Hofeman (Molecular Imprints, Corporation.), and Scott Dhuey, Bruce Harteneck, Erin Wood, and Stefano Cabrini (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). Servings of the work were carried out in the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that is based on work of Science, Office of BES, from the U.S. DOE under Contract No. P-AC02-05CH11231.

Read Full Story at Hard disk drive manufacturing process flow analysis notes