Formation of 13-nm-Pitch Block Copolymer Self-Assembled Nanodots Pattern for High-Density Magnetic Recording

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In this work, we demonstrated the fabrication of 13‐nm‐pitch block copolymer self‐assembled nanodots using high‐etching‐selectivity polystyrene‐poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PS‐PDMS) block copolymer for high‐density magnetic recording device. We adopted PS‐PDMS block copolymers with four different molecular weights of 30,000–7,500, 13,500–4,000, 11,700–2,900 and 7,000–1,500. With lowering molecular weight, the pitch of nanodots decreased from 33 to 22, 20 and 13 nm, and the diameter correspondingly decreased from 23 to 12, 10 and 6 nm. Surprisingly, we found that the etching time for removing the very thin top PDMS layer is longer when the used molecular weight of PS‐PDMS is lower than 13,500–4,000 in experiment. It means that PS‐PDMS with molecular weight lower than 13,500–4,000 forms thicker PDMS layer on the air/polymer interface of PS‐PDMS film after microphase process. This work promises to open way up to 4.41 terabit/inch2 magnetic recording device with low‐cost production.