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Park steals 90 percent share in AFM disc storage market

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Park Systems has recently announced a 90 percent market share in the disc storage market for AFM.

Park says its AFM offers superior technology and performance unmatched by the competition, and achieves the highest accuracy on the nanoscale.

This is due to the independent XY stage and Z scanner architecture, and flexure based design. The 'True Non-Contact AFM' also has a low operating cost and has many automated features for ease of use in failure analysis in the lab and in production environments.



                      Park Systems AFM

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a technique for analysing the surface of a rigid material all the way down to the level of the atom. AFM uses a mechanical probe to magnify surface features up to 100 million times, and it produces 3-D images of the surface.

The technique is derived from a related technology, called scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM). The difference is that AFM does not require the sample to conduct electricity, whereas STM does. AFM also works in regular room temperatures, while STM requires special temperature and other conditions.

AFM is being used to understand materials problems in many areas, including data storage and telecommunications. In data storage, it helps researchers to "force" a disk to have a higher capacity.

The image at the top of this article was taken using MFM (magnetic force microscopy). This is a type of AFM where a sharp magnetised tip scans a magnetic sample. The tip-sample magnetic interactions are detected and used to reconstruct the magnetic structure of the sample surface.

Many AFMs on the market require manual measurement and this can be very time consuming. Now Park has given us an automated version which speeds up data acquisition considerably..

Since 2007, Park has pioneered AFM nanoscale measurement and systems in both research and industry and its client list includes Harvard, Stanford, NASA, NIST, Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital.

"Our recent successes, which include capturing 90 percent of the hard disk industry market, were accomplished by outperforming our competition," comments Keibock Lee, Park Systems President.

"The old technology was riddled with problems and limitations, so Park created a new architecture and perfected the non-contact scanning technology that drastically increased accuracy and usability while bringing down the total cost of ownership of AFM tools. The manufacturers switched to Park AFM with the proof that our superior technology would meet their needs in the short and long term."

Park Systems achieved the impressive market share in the disc storage market through a focused effort on customer needs and performance requirements, resulting in a superior AFM product. In this highly competitive market, a transition from one vendor to another means eventually replacing all the tools, each costing a million dollars.

Park says its AFM is the only one that provides 3D scanning with a rotated head and automated defect reviews which can pin point hundreds of defects ten times faster than using the manual method.

The firm's new 3D AFM tool allows customers to do side wall angle and roughness measurements that were not possible before. Park has also developed and deployed a Programmable Density Scanning for the read/write poles.  

Programmable Data Density AFM scanning is used to magnify the region of interest, enabling customers to achieve more effective pole tip recession metrology. For the semiconductor and hard disk industry, Park's AFM can measure below 0.3 à… roughness, which is now the cutting edge in industry requirements.


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