Flying characteristics of a novel negative pressure slider “Papillon”

This paper proposes a novel design of a 50% shaped rail negative pressure air bearing slider, the Papillon slider. This design attains constant fly height and near-zero roll characteristics across the disk, simultaneously. The head roll due to seek acceleration is suppressed by controlling static roll angle and improving roll stiffness of the air bearing. It is shown that the side rail shape can be configured so as to improve the roll stiffness. Experiments also show that the Papillon slider has good takeoff and contact start/stop performance.