Vector Recording: Advancing Areal Density in HAMR With Innovative Read Head Design

The hard disk drive (HDD) industries necessitate substantial data storage capacity, and to meet this challenge, they are investigating innovative technologies such as heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). In HAMR, it is feasible to write higher kilo bits per inch (KBPI) and kilo tracks per inch (KTPI) to achieve a greater areal density capacity (ADC) of around 4 Tb/in². However, the existing reader architecture restricts the increase in BPI and TPI, as it requires scaling down the reader dimension to read data with a smaller bit length and narrower track width. Recently, two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) has shown some ability in the reading process to increase ADC and relax reader scaling, but this improvement is not sufficient to address the data storage crisis. In this article, we propose a novel read head design to detect the magnetic field both perpendicular (with a conventional reader) and parallel (with a vector reader) to the surface of the recording layer. We have also proposed alternative reader designs that can address limitations in biasing of the vector reader and are capable of performing similarly to that reader. Therefore, our newly designed reader architectures reduce the scaling issue of the reader dimension and are capable of recovering data with high TPI, thus achieving higher ADC.