CONTROL OF THE COMPOSITIONALLY SEPARATED MICROSTRUCTURE OF CoCr FILMS PREPARED BY ELECTRON CYCLOTRON RESONANCE PLASMA SPUTTERING

摘要

To reduce media noise, a recording media should have a very fine and magnetically isolated structure[1]. The sputtering method for forming such a microstructure continues to be a area of study. The compositionally separated (CS) microstructure found in CoCr-based alloy films is a promising magnetic microstructure for longitudinal and perpendicular magnetic recording [2,3]. Last year, we were the first to propose that electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma sputtering has the potential for forming such a structure in CoCr films[4]. In this study, we show that the ECR sputtering enables us to control the CS structure of CoCr films and confirm that refining the magnetic structure effectively reduces media noise.