Design and load/unload performance of hard disk drive suspension integrated with shape memory alloy thin film

We propose a new load/unload (L/UL) suspension featuring shape memory alloy (SMA) thin film and demonstrate its effectiveness through the L/UL simulation. We estimated the mechanical properties of the SMA with respect to the material phases by experiment and designed the proposed suspension by considering the vibration modes related to the L/UL performance. In order to effectively verify the effectiveness of the proposed suspension, we designed the suspension to have similar L/UL performance to that obtained from the conventional suspension when the SMA film is not activated. After analyzing the L/UL design parameters of the proposed suspension when the SMA is activated, we examine the relative performance of the conventional and proposed suspensions by L/UL simulation by comparing the vibration motions of the slider and the minimum gap size between the disk and slider.