Today's head/disk interface design has a wide flying height distribution due to manufacturing tolerances, environmental variations, and write-induced thermal protrusion. To reduce the magnetic spacing loss caused by these effects, we developed an active head slider with a nano-thermal actuator. The magnetic spacing of these sliders can be controlled in situ during drive operations. After simulating the heat transfer in the slider to obtain the thermal deformation of the airbearing surface, we fabricated a thermal actuator using thin-film processing. An evaluation done using a read/ write tester showed a linear reduction in the magnetic height as electric power was applied to the actuator. The actuator's stroke was 2.5 nm per 50 mW with a time constant of 1 ms. There was no significant impact on the reliability of the read element.

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The fundamental technologies for the optical interconnection in the VISI chip have been developed by using conventional Si LSI technologies. The micron-size optical waveguide consisting of Si3N4 core and SiO2 cladding layers has been fabricated by low pressure CVD and atmospheric pressure CVD, respectively. The small size lenses and the light direction converter which changes the light propagation direction from vertical to horizontal fbr the interlayer connection have also been fabricated

Fundamental technologies for optical interconnection on a Si LSI chip have been developed using conventional silicon process technologies. The optical waveguides with SiO x N y core and SiO2 cladding layers and Al micromirrors to change the light propagation direction have been fabricated by low-temperature deposition. Moreover, the single test chip integrated with a light-emitting diode (LED), photodiode, waveguides and micromirrors has been fabricated and signal transfer between LED and the photodetector has been achieved.