Demonstration of close-bit writing in probe storage on magnetic perpendicular media

¹ State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, P.R. China
² Department of Applied Physics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, P.R. China

Corresponding author: zyzhonguestc@yahoo.com.cn

Received: 3 December 2006
Revised: 18 February 2007
Accepted: 28 March 2007
Published online: 13 June 2007

Abstract

This paper presents a method of heat-assisted magnetic probe recording, which could help increase the storage density in hard-disk data storage systems. The heating source is the field emission current from a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) tip. As perpendicular magnetic recording media, two types of CoNi/Pt multilayered films are used: one is strongly-coupled and the other is weakly-coupled granular medium. Recording marks were formed by local heating in the medium. The average mark size is 180 nm for the strongly-coupled medium, and 110 nm for the weakly-coupled one. Marks are arrayed in different formations with various spacings. With reduced spacing, the write probability of the recording system is reduced. The interaction between marks becomes stronger and in the strongly-coupled medium their position becomes disordered. By contrast, this does not happen for marks written in the granular medium. Based on this demonstration, we conclude that granular medium becomes a better candidate for ultra-high density recording.