Effect of acrylic acid vapour on lubricated recording hard-disk media surfaces

Magnetic recording hard-disk drive may be attacked by many kinds of contaminations including vapours/gases. Vapour/gas contaminants are detrimental to magnetic heads, media and head-disk interfaces in hard-disk drive. Acrylic acid is a kind of gases released from drive components. In this study, the effects of acrylic acid vapour on the surface adsorption and corrosion of magnetic hard-disk media are investigated by TOF-SIMS. The related drive durability and failure property are discussed.     

Research and development of metal powder for magnetic recording

Since its first application within the compact cassette in 1978, magnetic recording media using metal powder have been improved at a rate of roughly 1 dB per year as a result of advances in such fields as tape materials, tape-making technologies, etc. Today, metal tapes have a widely expanded application area, including video and data-information applications. Dowa Mining Co., Ltd., began its research regarding magnetic powder for recording media in 1978. The Company successfully developed metal powder for 8 mm video tape. Since then, Dowa has endeavored to improve the magnetic properties and reduce the particle size of metal powder. It accomplishes these goals through the full use of the Company's unique Al doping method. Especially, during the past several years, significant improvements of the magnetic properties of metal powder have been achieved. These improvements have resulted from the introduction of new technologies, including Fe–Co alloying, sintering prevention, new reaction processes, and many other new techniques. Currently, Dowa Mining is supplying a new type of metal powder for the most technologically advanced high-density recording media. Dowa's new metal powder has an axis length of 0.1 μm, H_c of 2400 Oe, and σ_s of 155 emu/g.     

Prospects for bit patterned media for high-density magnetic recording

Prospects for bit patterned media (BPM) of more than 1 Tb/in² are discussed. Improvement in the pattern drawing for small feature size and high precision is necessary for fabrication process. Deviation in the magnetic properties should be estimated and reduced. The etching damage seems not to be large. Design of the substructure of the magnetic dot is necessary for reducing the deviation. BPM is also a good template for technologies to increase the recording density. Combination of BPM with heat-assisted recording or exchange-coupled layers is advantageous for high-density recording.     

磁记录硬盘介质研究进展

硬盘磁记录介质是磁性材料应用的一个重要方面,目前在信息存储领域占有重要的地位.文章概述了磁记录硬盘介质的发展过程以及研究和开发的状况,并对硬盘未来的发展前景作了分析.     

Perpendicular magnetic recording—Its development and realization—

The principle of conventional magnetic recording is that magnetic fields are applied parallel to the plane of the magnetic medium. As described in this paper, the invention and development of a new method of placing the magnetized information perpendicular to the plane of the magnetic recording medium is presented. The yield in the mass production of high-density hard disk drives (HDDs) for perpendicular recording is much higher than that of HDDs for conventional recording. Consequently, it is estimated that as many as 75% of the 500 million HDDs to be shipped this year will use this technology.     

Drive-based recording analyses at >800 Gfc/in using shingled recording

Since the introduction of perpendicular recording, conventional perpendicular scaling has enabled the hard disk drive industry to deliver products ranging from ∼130 to well over 500 Gb/in² in a little over 4 years. The incredible areal density growth spurt enabled by perpendicular recording is now endangered by an inability to effectively balance writeability with erasure effects at the system level. Shingled magnetic recording (SMR) offers an effective means to continue perpendicular areal density growth using conventional heads and tuned media designs. The use of specially designed edge-write head structures (also known as ‘corner writers’) should further increase the AD gain potential for shingled recording. In this paper, we will demonstrate the drive-based recording performance characteristics of a shingled recording system at areal densities in excess of 800 Gb/in² using a conventional head.Using a production drive base, developmental heads/media and a number of sophisticated analytical routines, we have studied the recording performance of a shingled magnetic recording subsystem. Our observations confirm excellent writeability in excess of 400 ktpi and a perpendicular system with acceptable noise balance, especially at extreme ID and OD skews where the benefits of SMR are quite pronounced. We believe that this demonstration illustrates that SMR is not only capable of productization, but is likely the path of least resistance toward production drive areal density closer to 1 Tb/in² and beyond.     

Ultra low head–disk spacing measurement using dual beam polarisation interferometry

In this paper, a dual-beam normal incidence polarisation interferometer is proposed to measure the flying height or head–disk spacing. Using this interferometer, the head–disk spacing can be measured both in magnetic real disk condition and in glass disk condition. It has the advantage of both the currently popular intensity interferometry method and the oblique incidence polarisation interferometry method. With this polarisation interferometer, not only the flying height can be measured down to contact without losing accuracy, but the pitch and roll of the head-slider can also be detected dynamically. The optical parameters of the head-slider can also be determined. Design details and experimental study are presented.     

Fabrication challenges for patterned recording media

Lithographically patterned recording media are one of the approaches to achieving Tb/in² and beyond recording densities. This will require fabrication of sub-10 nm discrete magnetic islands covering a full disk with tight spacing and size distributions and a narrow switching field distribution. To become an economically successful technology, this will need to be achieved with high throughput and low cost. The technology to fabricate such patterned media will need to be developed, and may require innovative solutions such as self-assembly and nanoimprinting, along with improved magnetic thin films for achieving high anisotropy and narrow switching field distributions.     

The influence of annealing on the structural and magnetic properties of C/CoCrPt/CrTi trilayer recording media

Post-deposition annealing was performed on trilayer films consisting of a C overcoat layer on top of CoCrPt/CrTi/glass substrate. We observed a coercivity of 3600 Oe in the films with a 4 nm C overcoat, which was about three times larger than the coercivity of similar films without a C overcoat. This is most likely due to the significant decrease in intergranular exchange coupling for the films with C overcoat, as shown by the annealing treatment. It is believed that the diffusion of C into CoCrPt grain boundaries promotes magnetic grain isolation.     

可用于光存储的氧化物、次氧化物薄膜材料的研究及发展

介绍了可用于可录、可擦除、全息光存储及超分辨掩膜层的氧化物、次氧化物薄膜材料的种类、制备方法、光存储特性和存储机制。这类薄膜材料由于具有种类多、应用范围广、制备方法多样、写入灵敏度高和记录稳定性好等优点 ,正受到各国研究者越来越多的关注。分析总结了这类材料的研究现状、存在的主要问题和未来发展方向     

Density limits imposed by the microstructure of magnetic recording media

The fundamental limit of magnetic recording density on conventional media is set by the grain size. Once this grain size limit is reached, only a reduction of the grain size allows an increased SNR and thus an increased areal density. It is shown that, whilst maintaining thermal stability, scaling demands that the required anisotropy energy density K is proportional to the areal density, or the square of the areal density if the medium thickness reaches the critical thickness (A is the exchange stiffness of the material). Recording onto materials with such a high anisotropy requires some form of a write-assist. It is furthermore shown that the grain size limit cannot be obtained with intergranular exchange present, and six different requirements are listed that constitute ideal media. An alternative path for increasing areal density of magnetic recording is to use patterned media, where each bit contains only one grain. In this case, written-in errors dominate system performance and the maximum achievable areal density is estimated to be about 6 Tbit/in². Patterned media need to exhibit narrow distributions of their physical and structural properties with standard deviations of the order of 5% or less.     

先进大容量存储技术

硬盘驱动器作为当前大容量数据存储的主要承载体,是一种基于磁存储技术的电子设备.随着物联网以及云计算的快速发展,传统的硬盘驱动器已经无法满足日益增长的存储需求.因此,近十年来,各大厂商致力于研发新型磁存储技术,并于近期推出了新的产品.文章将从传统硬盘驱动器的结构出发,具体分析传统磁存储面临的主要瓶颈,详细介绍当前最为瞩目...     

Extensions of perpendicular recording

Gains in storage density in magnetic recording have fundamentally been achieved by scaling—reduced geometrical dimensions under the assumption that the recording physics does not change if all dimensions are scaled appropriately. It is becoming clear that evidence of the breakdown of scaling is now seen. We will here discuss ways to break the constraints on magnetic recording set by scaling. In particular, we will discuss energy-assisted recording, domain-wall-assisted recording, and bit-patterned media, with some emphasis on recording system considerations.     

Strain imaging of a perpendicular recording head in a Hard Disk Drive

Imaging of magnetic-field-induced strains using scanning probe microscopy enables us to observe magnetic domain structures and magnetic force distributions. This method has an ability of observing magnetic structures in deep portions along with surface structures. We observed an air-bearing surface of a perpendicular recording head in a hard disk drive in large areas including the whole yokes, and investigated characteristics of the magnetic poles and layers subjected to magnetic fields produced by writing coil currents. Attractive forces independent of the field directions acted between the upper and lower yokes made by soft material, which generated surface displacements in the ABS. The signals were second-harmonic oscillations for alternating currents without a dc bias, and the amplitude images represented the field distribution. Meanwhile, fixed magnetic charges in both ends of the read sensor, which were produced by the hard-bias film, were subjected to the fields. The fixed charges, which hardly changed by the fields, lead to strains depending on the field directions, and generated specific contrasts of one pair of bright-dark spots in the strain images. In the absence of surface underlayer, the fields by the writing coil broke into the read sensor sandwiched by the shield layers.     

Nano-patterning of perpendicular magnetic recording media by low-energy implantation of chemically reactive ions

Magnetic nano-patterning of perpendicular hard disk media with perpendicular anisotropy, but preserving disk surface planarity, is presented here. Reactive ion implantation is used to locally modify the chemical composition (hence the magnetization and magnetic anisotropy) of the Co/Pd multilayer in irradiated areas. The procedure involves low energy, chemically reactive ion irradiation through a resist mask. Among N, P and As ions, P are shown to be most adequate to obtain optimum bit density and topography flatness for industrial Co/Pd multilayer media. The effect of this ion contributes to isolate perpendicular bits by destroying both anisotropy and magnetic exchange in the irradiated areas. Low ion fluences are effective due to the stabilization of atomic displacement levels by the chemical effect of covalent impurities.     

Future hard disk drive systems

This paper briefly reviews the evolution of today's hard disk drive with the additional intention of orienting the reader to the overall mechanical and electrical architecture. The modern hard disk drive is a miracle of storage capacity and function together with remarkable economy of design. This paper presents a personal view of future customer requirements and the anticipated design evolution of the components. There are critical decisions and great challenges ahead for the key technologies of heads, media, head-disk interface, mechanics, and electronics.     

Grating spacing dependence of nonvolatile holographic recording with arbitrary charge transport lengths

Grating spacing dependence of nonvolatile holographic recording in doubly doped lithium niobate crystals is theoretically investigated allowing arbitrary charge transport lengths. It is shown that the nonvolatile refractive index modulation initially increases with increasing grating spacing, then a saturation behavior arises because of the dominant bulk photovoltaic effect. Although different charge transport length results in different nonvolatile refractive index modulation, the grating spacing dependence of nonvolatile holographic recording obeys almost the same rules for arbitrary charge transport lengths. The experimental results obtained by recording nonvolatile holograms in LiNbO₃:Cu:Ce crystals with different grating spacing are consistent with the theoretical analyses.     

Study of attempt frequency in Sharrock's formula for perpendicular recording hard disk media

Change of the attempt frequency f_o in Sharrock's formula as functions of magnetostatic and inter-grain exchange couplings has been investigated using micromagnetic simulation. It was found that f_o increases monotonically with increasing the magnetostatic coupling, whose mechanism is not understood yet. It was also found that f_o decreases initially with increasing the inter-grain exchange coupling, below a critical value and increases above it. The initial decrease is likely due to that the exchange coupling depresses the effect of the magnetostatic coupling, because the effective fields from the neighboring grains are competing with each other. The increase of f_o above the critical value is deeply related to the increase of the thermal activation volume V.     

The limits to magnetic recording — media considerations

At present longitudinal magnetic recording systems are the basis of all low cost high-density information storage systems. During the recent past the data density stored on rigid disk media which is the higher density format have increased at the rate of 60% per annum compound. However, very recently due to the introduction of new advanced GMR spin-valve heads this rate of advance has increased to 100% per annum in laboratory demonstrations. Hence, it is pertinent at this time to enquire as to where the fundamental physical limitations of longitudinal magnetic recording may lie. In this context there are two principle areas of interest: the first of these is limitations to data rate. These are concerned with the fundamental physics of the maximum rate at which a magnetic moment may reverse from one direction to the other. The theoretical calculation of these limits is complex and not well understood but the limits of our understanding will be reviewed in this paper. Secondly, and of principle concern is the limit to the density at which information can be stored in a magnetic thin film. This latter limitation is based around the signal to noise ratio and also the question of the stability of increasingly small written bits. Signal to noise considerations are extremely complex and derive from factors such as the shape of bits and cross-talk between neighbouring bits or even neighbouring tracks. In this article the fundamental origins of noise will be reviewed in terms of the basic physics that gives rise to variation in transition shapes. Cross-talk and cross-track interference will not be discussed as these are generally addressed through issues associated with the resolution of the servo-mechanism that positions the head above a track and is not associated with the fundamental physics of the medium itself. Thermal stability of a bit of information is of critical importance particularly as media is made ever thinner and will form a major aspect of the discussion in this work. Finally, possible material physics solutions to some of these limitations will be presented in terms of measurable parameters which to some limited degree may be controlled by process conditions.     

新型防潮的光致聚合物全息记录材料及其应用

本文研制出一种新型兰敏的光致聚合物全息记录材料,并提出再聚会固定全息再现峰值波长的方法.这种记录材料由增感剂,引发剂,链转移剂,单体和成膜物组成.用本材料记录的全息图衍射效率可达95%以上,且能防潮,耐高温.