Popcorn noise is a large transient noise spike at the reader shortly after writing due to unstable domains in writer yoke. The popcorn noise was found to dependent on write frequency. It is firstly reported that the popcorn noise occurred by the write instability of shielded-single-pole head (SSPH) can be captured in row-bar level QST which is experimentally confirmed. Thus, a PMR head can be rejected by the row-bar level QST. In addition, the writing stress traced by the MR transfer curve can possibly accelerate the head degradation.

When the track density of two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) systems is increased, intertrack interference (ITI) inevitably grows, resulting in the extreme degradation of an overall system performance. In this work, we present coding, writing, and reading techniques which allow TDMR systems with multi-readers to overcome severe ITI. A rate-5/6 two-dimensional (2D) modulation code is adopted to protect middle-track data from ITI based on cross-track data dependence. Since the rate-5/6 2D modulation code greatly improves the reliability of the middle-track, there is a bit-error rate gap between middle-track and sidetracks. Therefore, we propose the different track width writing technique to optimize the reliability of all three data tracks. In addition, we also evaluate the TDMR system performance using an user areal density capability (UADC) as a main key parameter. Here, an areal density capability (ADC) can be measured by finding the bit-error rate of the system with sweeping track and linear densities. The UADC is then obtained by removing redundancy from the ADC. Simulation results show that a system with our proposed techniques gains the UADC of about 4.66% over the conventional TDMR systems.

We did an experimental study to investigate the effect of the thermal stress due to the heater for adjusting adaptive flying height (AFH) on the readability and instability of tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) sensors. The slider head consists of a small heater nearby the read/write elements for controlling the clearance between the read/write elements and the recording medium of the magnetic recording system. It is firstly reported that the thermal stress from the AFH heater induces instabilities and caused head degradation. The thermal stress degrades the reader performance by inducing voltage fluctuations and large noise spikes that causes the magnetic recording system having poor bit error rate (BER). The open loop of the transfer curve indicates that the flipping of a synthetic antiferromagnet (SAF) edge magnetization causes these instabilities. The thermal stress reduces the exchange bias field and the energy barrier to flop the SAF edge magnetization. The dispersion and thermal stability of the antiferromagnetic (AFM) layer are the potential root causes of these SAF instabilities because the larger AFM dispersion in these heads gives less net stabilizing field to SAF layers that lowers the energy barrier to flop the SAF edge magnetization. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of these weak heads show rough surface and scratches close to the sensor element. The mechanical stress due to these scratches may additionally impact to the stabilizing field of the SAF.