Effect of air bearing surface on shock resistance of optical head for solid immersion lens based near field recording system

A solid immersion lens (SIL)-based near field recording (NFR) device is regarded as the next generation optical storage device that can achieve an areal density over 100 GB/[in.sup.2]. However, the NFR system is very weak for the external shock due to the extremely small gap between a SIL and a disc. Many researches using a gap servo control were carried out, but the results were too insufficient to satisfy needs of the industry. To solve this problem, we propose a new method using air bearing surface (ABS) to avoid a collision between the SIL and the disc occurred by the external shock. In this paer, we check a feasibility of a ABS on shock resistance in NFR system due to many reasons such as a large mass of moving part, a protrusion of the SIL and a low stiffness of wire. We also design an ABS to avoid effectively the collision between the SIL and the disc and to improve shock resistance of SIL based NFR system. Finally, we investigate the effect of the ABS on shock resistance of optical head for SIL based NFR system. Index Terms--Air bearing surface, near field recording, shock resistance, solid immersion lens.