Thermal stability enhancement of perpendicular media with high-order uniaxial anisotropy

The effect of second-order uniaxial anisotropy energy K-2 on thermal stability and writability of perpendicular media has been studied. Due to the high orientation of crystalline easy axes, both energy barrier and dynamic coercivity of perpendicular media increases with K-2. With relatively more increase in energy barrier, improvement of the tradeoff between thermal stability and writability can be achieved by increasing K-2. The field angle dependence with nonzero K-2 is also quantitatively investigated.