Method and apparatus for cooling GMR heads for magnetic hard disks
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorUttam Shyamalindu Ghoshal
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Abstract
A thermoelectric cooling (TEC) device is thermally coupled, in close proximity, to a GMR head chip. When power is applied to the TEC device, heat is extracted from the GMR head chip by heat transfer to the cold end of the TEC device and rejected by heat pipes or cooling fins along the slider arm, in one embodiment. In another embodiment, a TEC device is integrated with the GMR head chip such that the cold end of the TEC device is physically and thermally coupled with the GMR head chip. Heat is transferred from the GMR head chip to a thermal spreader pad on the `hot` end of the integrated GMR/TEC device.
Claims21
A cooling apparatus, comprising:
- a thermoelectric cooling device;
- a heat transfer medium;
- and
- a data storage system component thermally coupled to said thermoelectric cooling device via said heat transfer medium for transferring heat from said data storage system component.
A cooling method, comprising the steps of:
- thermally coupling a thermoelectric cooling device to a heat transfer medium;
- and
- transferring heat from a data storage system component thermally coupled to said heat transfer medium by applying power to said thermoelectric cooling device.
A data storage system, comprising:
- a thermoelectric cooling device;
- a heat transfer medium thermally coupled to said cooling device;
- and
- a data storage system component thermally coupled to said heat transfer medium wherein heat may be transferred from said component to said thermoelectric cooling device.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.