HAMR Medium Structure Design and Its Process for Excellent Thermal Performance

The L1(0) ordered FePt-based medium with a novel thermal design for heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) application has been demonstrated. The proposed seed-then-heat sink approach using the (001) textured Cu3N as the underlayer to induce the MgO (200) texture at room temperature. The high temperature process for FePtX granular film deposition resulted in the decomposition of the Cu3N to Cu and made it a suitable heat sink layer. Our approach eliminated the effect of the boundary thermal resistance and enabled a large thermal gradient during the writing process, which is critical to the FePt-based medium for HAMR application.