Patent ID: 8295014

Claim:
A disk drive comprising: a disk drive base; a disk rotably mounted to the disk drive base; an actuator rotably mounted to the disk drive base, the actuator including a flexible printed circuit (FPC) that includes a plurality of electrically conductive FPC bond pads; and at least one head gimbal assembly attached to the actuator, the at least one head gimbal assembly comprising a read head; and a suspension assembly that comprises a load beam, and a laminate flexure that comprises a structural layer, a dielectric layer, and a conductive layer that includes a plurality of electrical traces, the laminate flexure including a tongue portion that connects to the read head and a flexure tail that extends to the plurality of FPC bond pads, the flexure tail defining a flexure tail longitudinal axis; wherein the flexure tail includes a plurality of flexure bond pads, each of the plurality of flexure bond pads being aligned with a corresponding one of the plurality of FPC bond pads, each of the plurality of flexure bond pads consisting of a widened region of a corresponding one of the plurality of electrical traces in the conductive layer, and a gold coating upon the widened region; wherein the widened region of each of the plurality of electrical traces extends transverse to the flexure tail longitudinal axis at least 2.5 times more than it extends parallel to the flexure tail longitudinal axis; and wherein a bond exists between each of the flexure bond pads and the corresponding one of the plurality of FPC bond pads, and the bond is an ultrasonic gold bond or an anisotropic conductive film.