CoPt-C nanogranular magnetic thin films

Cobalt-platinum-carbon thin film was deposited with a chemical composition of Co50Pt15C35. The film had a nanogranular morphology with a grain size ranging from 5 to 15 nm. It consisted of cobalt-platinum grains which had a faulted hexagonal close-packed phase and were separated by graphitelike carbon boundaries. The film in-plane coercivity was 1500 Oe, compared to a few hundreds oersteds in the case of cobalt-carbon. This result establishes a way of fabricating high coercivity cobalt-carbon based materials, which have potential applications as high density magnetic recording media. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.