Improvement of Recording Density of Amorphous TbFeCo Magnetic Recording Layer on FeC Soft Magnetic Back Layer

Abstract

The effect of the surface morphology of an intermediate layer on recording density was studied for perpendicular magnetic recording media composed of an FeC soft magnetic back layer, a nonmagnetic intermediate layer and an amorphous TbFeCo perpendicular magnetic recording layer. We confirmed that the formation of a very thin intermediate layer with small grains enabled high-density recording on the TbFeCo recording layer. The intermediate layer was 3 nm thick and the grain diameter was about 13 nm. The intermediate layer had a multilayered structure, which consisted of a dielectric layer, two metallic layers, and a C layer. The D50 of the media with the multilayered intermediate layer was 100 kilo flux changes per inch (kFCI) higher than that of the media with a single-layer intermediate layer. In addition, the roll-off characteristic was considerably improved by differentiating the row read head response; D50 was 395 kFCI.