Small-angle polarized neutron studies of perpendicular magnetic recording media

2009 
Polarized small-angle neutron scattering has been used to measure the local magnetic structure of writable thin-film perpendicular media with a granular CoCrPt-SiOx recording layer. By exploiting the cross terms between the nuclear and magnetic scattering, we are able to probe simultaneously both the grain structure and the subgranular magnetic structure of the recording layer, which has a thickness of only 15 nm and which is embedded within a full perpendicular media structure including soft underlayer. Two models are used to analyze the data, one analytical and the other a numerical approach based on transmission electron microscopy measurements of the grains. Both models show that the recording layer consists of ferromagnetically ordered core regions that are smaller in extent than the corresponding grains and allow a direct, quantitative comparison of these two length scales.
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