Abstract: The sensitivity of the fly height of a HDD (hard disk drive) recording head to temperature variations can be greatly reduced, eliminated or controlled in a manner to enhance HDD performance under various temperature conditions by affixing a thermal element to the HGA (head gimbals assembly) flexure. The thermal element in this invention is a deposited, patterned layer of DLC (diamond-like carbon) that has a coefficient of thermal expansion that is less than that of the stainless steel flexure. As a result of the placement of this thermal element on the flexure, the temperature-induced angular variations of PSA (pitch static attitude) can be made to compensate for temperature-induced changes in the slider crown curvature, thereby reducing or eliminating fly height variations due to temperature.