Antiferromagnetically coupled media performance

Magnetic and recording properties of antiferromagnetically coupled (AFC) media are studied in comparison to conventional media. AFC media have superior magnetic recording properties compared to conventional media in terms of media signal to noise ratio (S0NR) increase and transition pulse width (PW50) reduction. Such improvements are most significant for media with (11.0) texture, small underlayer grain size, and low dispersion of the crystallographic texture. AFC media with (10.0) texture do not perform as well. In particular, AFC media have wider PW50 than conventional media in this orientation. For (11.0) textured media, the large underlayer grain size reduces media SNR improvement of AFC media while exchange field reduction is the major drawback of the deteriorated crystallographic texture.