SAE Magnetics and Headway Technologies Assigned Patent

SAE Magnetics (H.K.) Ltd., Shatin, HongKong, and Headway Technologies, Inc., Milpitas, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,232,812) developed by Zheng, Guoqiang, and Cha, Ellis, San Ramon, CA, for an “air-bearing surface (ABS) design with side flow blocker for mitigating lube and hydrocarbon accumulation in hard disk drives (HDD).“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A slider-mounted read/write transducer for a hard disk drive (HDD) has a topology that mitigates attraction and accumulation of lubricant and hydrocarbons during the HDD operation. The slider topology may include a pattern of cavities and channels symmetrically disposed about a central longitudinal axis. The slider may also have a transverse channel extending perpendicularly inward from an opening in each side edge of the slider to intersect a channel that extends longitudinally along a middle axis towards a leading-edge pad in which a read/write transducer is embedded. The ends of the transverse channel open into an air-carrying groove extending vertically upward in the side of the slider in which a side flow blocker (SFB) restricts the air flow into the channel portion.”

The patent application was filed on filed: February 18, 2021 (17/178,978).