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Application of Micro-, Surface Enhanced, and Tip Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy for Thermography and Damage Analysis of Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording Systems

Abstract

This thesis presents a method that provides important insights into the nanoscale photo-thermal damage process, thus allowing engineers to better find solutions to abate the wear process. With the ever-increasing need for data storage, new technologies that increase the storage capacity of computer memory are necessary for the advancement of computational systems. One such technology is heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) for hard disk drives. Heat-assisted magnetic recording has the promise of offering a cost-effective way of increasing the data storage density of computers disk drives systems used for the bulk storage of data. While HAMR technology has seen promising advancements towards widespread deployment, engineering challenges remain due to the fact that HAMR drives degrade and fail due to nanoscale photo-thermal wear.

This thesis presents a method that provides important insights into the nanoscale photo-thermal damage process, thus allowing engineers to better find solutions to abate the wear process in the drives down to optimal levels. In this thesis, tip enhanced Raman spectroscopy is used to generate near-field radiation, similar to that which causes the nanoscale photo-thermal wear in HAMR drives, while simultaneously measuring the material properties of a sample which is exposed to said radiation. The method presented in this thesis is intended to be used in conjunction with numerical models, other supporting experimentation, and component-level testing in order to better predict the wear life of potential HAMR drives designs.

It was found that it is possible to generate near-field radiation using tip enhanced Raman spectroscopy on a sample of hard disk drive media while simultaneously measuring chemical properties in situ. Further work will have to be conducted in order to generate intense enough radiation to clearly damage the hard disk drive media and to map the damage caused by the radiation.

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