Recording Comparison of ECC versus Conventional Media at Equal Grain Size

Transition jitter and shape have been studied for “soft” exchange coupled composite (ECC) media and conventional perpendicular media using micromagnetic simulation. A realistic medium having nonuniform grain size has been employed. Media anisotropies are optimized to reduce the high density jitter for ECC and conventional media. Surprisingly, jitter is slightly decreased at high temperature for both media types. Eye diagrams show that short bit length amplitude is higher for ECC by approximately 10% at room temperature. This indicates that sharper transitions were obtained for ECC media particularly at 300 K where the thermal stability of ECC media presumably aids the write process.