Co alloy longitudinal thin film media with ultrahigh coercivity

The effect of CoCrTa intermediate layer and postannealing on the magnetic properties and microstructure of CoCrPt/Cr thin film media has been investigated. Through a postdeposition annealing in a vacuum oven, a tremendous increase of coercivity up to 6000 Oe was observed for these CoCrPt/CoCrTa/Cr films, in which the thickness of CoCrTa intermediate layer is about 2.6 mm. X-ray diffraction results showed that the hexagonal-close-packed crystallographic structure for the cobalt alloy did not show any change for the sample after postannealing. In-plane transmission electron microscope images for the CoCrPt/CoCrTa/Cr films showed no change of the morphology before and after annealing and about 15% increase of the grain size for the films after annealing. Delta M curves and remanent squareness results showed that intergrain diffusion may result in this improvement of magnetic properties. Atomic force microscope images showed that the surface roughness for the sample after annealing was almost the same as that before annealing. After tailoring the thickness of the magnetic layer to 10 nm, the coercivity as high as 5200 Oe and M_rt value as low as 0.24 memu/cm² were obtained, which may support ultrahigh bit density than current media.