Magnetic recording media having five element alloy deposited using pulsed direct current sputtering

Abstract

CoCrPtB is a conventional material used in some of the layers of a thin film magnetic media structure used for recording data in data storage devices such as hard drives. Typically the CoCrPtB layers used for magnetic media have high Cr and low B in bottom magnetic layers and low Cr and high B in top magnetic layers. In accordance with one embodiment of this invention and to improve media electrical performance, fifth elements, such as Ta, Nb and Hf, etc. were added to the CoCrPtB materials, resulting in CoCrPtB-X, to enhance the grain segregation. The five element CoCrPtB-X layers were deposited using a pulsed direct current sputter technique instead of conventional direct current sputtering techniques. The resulting magnetic media structure having CoCrPtB-X alloy layers exhibits an increase in coercivity Hc and improvement in recording performance.

Description

[0001]This application claims priority from U.S. provisional application Ser. No. 60 / 479,217 filed on Jun. 16, 2003.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention relates generally to the field of disc drive storage, and more particularly to multilayer magnetic media used in data storage devices.[0004]2. Description of the Related Art[0005]Conventional disc drives are used to magnetically record, store and retrieve digital data. Data is recorded to and retrieved from one or more discs that are rotated at more than one thousand revolutions per minute (rpm) by a motor. The data is recorded and retrieved from the discs by an array of vertically aligned read / write head assemblies, which are controllably moved from data track to data track by an actuator assembly.[0006]The three major components making up a conventional hard disc drive are magnetic media, read / write head assemblies and motors. Magnetic media, which is used as a medium to magneticall...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent text describes a magnetic recording medium that includes a five-element alloy made of CoCrPtB-X, where X can be Ta, Nb, or Hf. The alloy is deposited using a pulsed direct current sputtering technique, which allows for precise control over the deposition process. The resulting medium has improved performance and stability compared to conventional magnetic recording media. The technical effects of this patent include improved performance and stability of magnetic recording media through the use of a five-element alloy and precise deposition using a pulsed direct current sputtering technique.

Problems solved by technology

The problems with some of these techniques are that magnetic media having high coercivity (Hc) and high anisotropy is limited head writability.

The increase of Hc from larger grain size also negatively affects the media signal to noise ratio.

Although higher MrT orientation ratio can be achieved through texture and cleaning processes, the improvements are limited.

However, high Ms alloys with lower Cr at % usually has significant impacts on the grain segregation, which negatively affects the media by increasing the media noise.

Although continuous grain size reduction improves signal to noise properties and is desirable, it is limited by media thermal decay due to superparamagnetic behavior.

However, there is a limitation to the amount of optimization of these compositions that can be done because the Cr percentage has increased to the point that the materials are on the verge of being non-magnetic.

Despite the improvements that have been made in reducing noise of recording media having high areal density there are still many problems that need to be addressed including making desirable thermally stable magnetic media with higher signal to noise ratios and narrow track recording widths.

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