Magnetic and crystallographic properties of sputtered Co-Ni-Zr films on Cr, Mo and W underlayer

Read and write characteristics and magnetic and crystallographic properties of sputtered Co-Ni-Zr on Cr, Mo, and W underlayers are investigated. The crystal grains of the underlayer and the magnetic layer are rice-like and consist of 2 to 10 columnar subgrains. The coercivity of composite films depends on the size of subgrains, reaching a maximum when the magnetic crystal size is about 40 nm. Media noise is proportional to the square root of the length of the rice-like grains; this can be explained by particle-noise theory.>