Fabrication of Granular FePt-L10 HAMR Media with High Grain Aspect Ratio

Abstract

In granular FePt-L10 HAMR media. sufficient grain volume is critical for achieving expected areal density capability (ADC) [1][2]. Grain height needs to be increased as the grain size decreases. We present an experimental study on the fabrication of HAMR media with tall/high aspect ratio FePt-L10 grains.The underlayer stack consists of Ta(5nm)/Cr(40nm)/MgO(8nm) prior to the magnetic layer deposition. A 0.5 nm FePt layer is deposited on the MgO underlayer for initial grain nucleation, followed by the deposition of 2 nm FePt-BN (35% boron nitride) both at 700 oC. Over the FePt/FePt-BN stack, FePt-SiOx of 10nm thickness is deposited in the following manner: The first 3.5nm are deposited at 600 oC followed by immediately turning-off of the substrate heating and the rest of the layer is then deposited while the substrate undergoes naturally cooling. The ending temperature is 430 oC . The volumetric SiOx concentration of the FePt-SiOx layer is also graded from 40% at the bottom to 18% at the top. The L10 order parameter is S=0.72, calculated based the XRD measurement. Figure 1 shows the plan view HAADF TEM image (left) and cross-section view TEM image (right). The plan view image clearly shows well separated grains with average grain size around 6nm. The cross-section image shows columnar grains with well-defined grain boundaries and a grain aspect ratio ranging from 1.7 to 2.In this film stack, the SiOx grain boundaries are vertically matched with boron-nitride grain boundaries at the interface of the two layers. If the deposition temperature exceeds 650 oC, the majority of the adjacent FePt grains could become laterally connected over the entire thickness of the FePt-SiOx layer whereas the BN grain boundaries remains intact. While we vary the deposition conditions of the FePt-SiOx layer, the FePt/FePt-BN stack acts as a fixed template layer for the grain growth on top. For the FePt-SiOx layer, the graded SiOx composition combined with the graded deposition temperature serves the key to (1) ensure columnar grains that are well separated by SiOx grain boundaries and (2) avoid the formation of 2nd layer FePt grains.  Fig. 1. Planview HAADF (Left) and Cross-section (Right) TEM image of the entire medium stack.