Effects of surface oxidization of amorphous Ni-based alloy seed layers on noise of CoCrPt/CrTi media

摘要

Role of a seed layer is very important to improve a microstructure and a recording performance of thin film media fabricated on glass substrates. We have reported that a surface oxidization of CoCrZr seed layer reduced grain size of CrTi underlayer and noise of CoCrPt/CrTi media effectively. It was possibly due to restraint of lateral growth of the CrTi grains by the zirconium oxide nuclei. As Ni is not easier to be oxidized than the Co from the point of a standard free energy, Ni instead of Co can be used as a matrix of the seed layer. In this study, therefore, we investigated the effect of the surface oxidization of new seed layers of NiCrZr and NiTa on crystallographic structure and read/write performance of the media.