Advanced granular-type perpendicular recording media

We introduce our recent experimental results for three blocked layers for currently used perpendicular recording media; a recording layer (RL: for recording), a soft magnetic underlayer (SUL: magnetic flux path in writing), and a nonmagnetic intermediate layer (NMIL: underlayer of RL and separation layer between RL and SUL). For the NMIL, uniaxial crystallographic symmetry is an essential requirement for suppression of variant growth of magnetic grains in granular-type RL. From this view point, AlN with wurtzite structure and materials with pseudo-hcp structure, which means fcc structure with stacking faults, were found to be effective. For the SUL, disordered hcp CoIr with negative K_u were found to well suppress both spike noise and track erasure due to a wide distribution of magnetic flux under the return yoke in writing and formation of a Neel wall instead of a Bloch wall in the SUL. For the RL, positive-/negative-K_u stacked media with incoherent switching mode was found to be effective in order to solve the recent write-ability problem for high K_u RL material with high thermal stability. Applying all these items, an advanced medium concept with the stacking structure of "CoPtCr-oxide/CoIr-oxide/CoIr/pseudo-hcp nonmagnetic layer/substrate" is very promising from the view point of (1) switching field reduction of a RL with high K_u material, (2) conventional amorphous SUL free, and (3) conventional NMIL free.