Electrical and thermal recording techniques using a heater integrated microprobe

In this paper, we describe the fabrication of a heater integrated microprobe and we propose microprobe-based electrical and thermal recording techniques for application to high-density data storage. The small heater with a sharp tip is located at the free end of the microprobe and can be heated up electrically by flowing a pulsed current through the microprobe legs. The generated heat is transferred to the media through the tip to create a bit. The dimensions of the small heater are minimized to reduce the power consumption and increase the thermal response. For the electrical recording on the thin Pb(ZrTi)O₃ (PZT) film, a pulse voltage is applied between the conductive tip and the bottom Pt electrode, which induces a local polarization of the PZT. To read the direction of the local polarization, the static deflection of the microprobe is measured through a lock-in amplifier while the tip with small ac voltage is traveling on the PZT medium. For the thermal recording on the thin AgInSbTe film, the small heater is employed instead of a focused laser. The electrical resistance between the tip and the bottom Pt electrode is directly measured to read the phase information in a local region. The recording marks on both materials are below 100 nm in diameter, which corresponds to the areal density of 100 Gb in.^-2.