A microactuator for head positioning system of hard disk drives

We proposed a new microactuator to realize high track density of Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). The proposed actuator is an electrostatic actuator with multiple parallel plate electrodes and it drives only a Read/Write (R/W) head element. The actuator is fabricated by micromachining technologies. We show the desired design parameters of actuators which will achieve 40 kilo track per inch (TPI). The required driving gap aspect ratio for a silicon actuator and a nickel actuator are 20 and 50 respectively. The aspect ratio of 20 for silicon will be realized by an Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) etching process and the aspect ratio of 50 for nickel will be fabricated by a novel electroforming process with vertical sacrificial layer.