Perpendicular recording

Perpendicular recording can deliver more than three times the storage density of traditional longitudinal recording. In 1986, Maxell announced a floppy disk using perpendicular recording that could store 100 kB per inch (39 kB/cm). Perpendicular recording was later used by Toshiba in 3.5' floppy disks in 1989 to permit 2.88 MB of capacity (ED or extra-high density), but they failed to succeed in the marketplace. Since about 2005, the technology has come into use for hard disk drives. Hard disk technology with longitudinal recording has an estimated limit of 100 to 200 gigabit per square inch (16 to 31 Gb/cm2) due to the superparamagnetic effect, though this estimate is constantly changing. Perpendicular recording is predicted to allow information densities of up to around 1,000 Gbit/in2 (160 Gbit/cm2). As of August 2010, drives with densities of 667 Gb/in2 (103.4 Gb/cm2) were available commercially, and there have been perpendicular recording demonstrations of 800–900 Gb/in2 (120–140 Gb/cm2). The main challenge in designing magnetic information storage media is to retain the magnetization of the medium despite thermal fluctuations caused by the superparamagnetic limit. If the thermal energy is too high, there may be enough energy to reverse the magnetization in a region of the medium, destroying the data stored there. The energy required to reverse the magnetization of a magnetic region is proportional to the size of the magnetic region and the magnetic coercivity of the material. The larger the magnetic region is and the higher the magnetic coercivity of the material, the more stable the medium is. Thus, there is a minimum size for a magnetic region at a given temperature and coercivity. If it is any smaller it is likely to be spontaneously de-magnetized by local thermal fluctuations. Perpendicular recording uses higher coercivity materials because the head's write field penetrates the medium more efficiently in the perpendicular geometry. The popular explanation for the advantage of perpendicular recording is that it achieves higher storage densities by aligning the poles of the magnetic elements, which represent bits, perpendicularly to the surface of the disk platter, as shown in the illustration. In this not-quite-accurate explanation, aligning the bits in this manner takes less platter area than what would have been required had they been placed longitudinally. This means cells can be placed closer together on the platter, thus increasing the number of magnetic elements that can be stored in a given area. The true picture is a bit more complex, having to do with the use of a magnetically 'stronger' (higher coercivity) material as the storage medium. This is possible because in a perpendicular arrangement the magnetic flux is guided through a magnetically soft (and relatively thick) underlayer underneath the hard magnetic media films (considerably complicating and thickening the total disk structure). This magnetically soft underlayer can be effectively considered a part of the write head, making the write head more efficient, thus making it possible to produce a stronger write field gradient with essentially the same head materials as for longitudinal heads, and therefore allowing for the use of the higher coercivity magnetic storage medium. A higher coercivity medium is inherently thermally more stable, as stability is proportional to the product of bit (or magnetic grain) volume times the uniaxial anisotropy constant Ku, which in turn is higher for a material with a higher magnetic coercivity.