The Effects of Cross Hatch Angle (CHA) on Magnetic Properties and Read/Write Characteristics of CoCrPtTaB Thin Film Media

Abstract

ABSTRACTCross-hatch type texturing has been widely used to replace circumferential texturing in the thin film media industry for optimizing tribology performance. However, higher “cross hatch angle” (CHA) may degrade magnetic performance. The relationship between texturing cross hatch angle (CHA) and magnetic properties and their effects on the read/write characteristics of sputtered thin film media are discussed in this paper. As the CHA increases, both the orientation ratio (OR) and the squareness ratio “S(c)/S(r)” decrease. The film with the highest OR is located at CHA=90, which has the lowest media noise. The medium has highest signal/noise ratio when CHA is equal to 90. PW50 can decrease as much as 4 nanoseconds as CHA increases to 730. By calculating a ratio of the intensity of Cr (110) + CoCrPtTaB (0002) to the intensity of Cr (200), we are able to correlate the intensity ratio to magnetic properties and read/write characteristics.