L1₀ FePtX-Y media for heat-assisted magnetic recording

Highly chemically ordered L10 FePtX–Y nano-granular films with high perpendicular magnetic anisotropy are key media approaches for future heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). They are sputtered at elevated temperature on glass disks coated with adhesion, heat sink, and texturing layers. Adding X = Ag reduces the required deposition temperature and X = Cu lowers the Curie temperature. Current seed layers are NiTa for adhesion and heat sink and well-oriented MgO (002) layers for highly textured FePtX(002) grains surrounded by Y = carbon and/or other segregants. Magnetic anisotropies larger than 4.5 × 107 erg cm−3 and coercivities beyond 5 Tesla have been achieved. The combination of thermal conductivity and Curie temperature determines the required laser power during recording. Key goals are to optimize media, heads, head-disk-spacing, and read-back channels to extend the areal density to 1.5–5 Tb in−2. Head and media in heat-assisted magnetic recording1. LD, laser diode; TFC, thermal fluctuation control; NFT, near field transducer. 1Lidu Huang et al., “HAMR Thermal Modeling Including Media Hot Spot”, APMRC 2012.