US Patent Issued to Western Digital Technologies on Oct. 14 for "Magnetic head air bearing design with island blocker for smear mitigation" (American, Japanese, Chinese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,444,438, issued on Oct. 14, was assigned to Western Digital Technologies Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).

"Magnetic head air bearing design with island blocker for smear mitigation" was invented by Yong Hu (San Ramon, Calif.), Taichi Nakamura (Sagamihara, Japan), Biao Sun (Fremont, Calif.) and Xiaojuan Ran (Shenzhen, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A slider for a data storage device may include a trailing pad comprising a recording head, an outer surface, and an inner surface, wherein the outer surface is at the media-adjacent level and the inner surface is at the first recessed level. The slider may further include particle-blocking struct...