Antiferromagnetically coupled perpendicular recording media

We demonstrate that the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction can be used to improve the stability of perpendicular recording media. Both the nucleation field and the coercivity in the perpendicular direction increase due to the antiferromagnetic coupling (AFC). Analogous to longitudinal AFC media, it is observed that the magnetization of the stabilization layer slowly relaxes to the antiparallel state. This relaxation is primarily driven by the demagnetizing fields in the stabilization layer and hence becomes slower with increasing bit density.