Heat-sink designs for plasmonic transducers in heat assisted magnetic recording

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is a promising technique to extend the areal density of hard drives. In HAMR, localized optical spots are obtained via plasmonic transducers and these plasmonic transducers are utilized to heat the magnetic medium during the recording process. One potential challenge in a HAMR system is the heating of plasmonic transducers and performance reduction due to such heating. The heating of the plasmonic transducers can result in both performance and reliability issues in a HAMR system, including structural distortions of the slider and transducer. In this study, to overcome the aforementioned performance and reliability issues in HAMR, we designed heat-sinks for plasmonic transducers and reduced the temperature of the plasmonic transducer and surroundings by cooling techniques. We discuss various plasmonic transducers and provide heat-sink designs to reduce their heating.