Study of thermally assisted magnetic probe recording on perpendicular media

Abstract

This paper demonstrates a technique on heat-assisted magnetic probe recording. The recording medium is a CoNi/Pt multilayered film, suitable for perpendicular recording. Scanning tunneling microscopy(STM) current was introduced to heat the medium locally. Pulse voltages of 2—9V, 500ns in width and 100ns in risetime were used to write marks. Marking was achieved at bias voltages higher than the threshold value 4V in the shape of circular dots with an average size of 170nm. Below the threshold, no marks were observed. A simple model qualitatively explains the experiment.