High Resolution TEM Analyses

of Perpendicular Storage Media

R. Sinclair, U. Kwon, J. Risner, F. Hossein-Babaei and R. Kim

Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305

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The Hard Drive

Magnetic recording, Stella Z. Wu, Seagate Technology

IEEE Magnetics Society Summer School, 2014 2
 The Hard Drive
The ability to store huge amounts of
data supports many industries:
 Personal computing
– Laptops, desktops.
 IT infrastructure
– Servers, databases.

Image courtesy of Seagate

 Personal electronics
– PDAs, IPODs.
 Permanent data storage.  Digital Video/Image Processing

 Instant retrieval.  Video Game Consoles

 Editing and re-storage. – Microsoft Xbox, etc.

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April Alstrin et al., 2015 Information Storage Industry Consortium. 4
Cost per Gigabyte

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 Magnetization curve

Sample A – no reactive O
Sample B – low O
Sample C – medium O
Sample D – high O

M-H hysteresis loops of 18 nm-thick CoCrPt-oxide media with different oxygen contents

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 Electron Spins and Magnetic Fields

Positive spin Negative spin

• Electron spin points
from north to south

• Field lines outside

material point north to
south

• Field inside material

points south to north

• Spin direction and

field direction are
opposite as electrons
have negative charge

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 Perpendicular vs. Longitudinal

Longitudinal Perpendicular
Bit Length

Track
Width
Film
Thickness

 HCP Cobalt-alloy
 HCP Cobalt-alloy
[0001]  Magnetic easy axis
 Magnetic easy axis
aligned in film plane.
aligned normal to film
plane.
Thicker media  Maintain Volume

Thermal Stability?
Good Thermal Stability

Both media affected by similar constraints and challenges.

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 Bit Transition

Exchange decoupled large grains

Exchange decoupled small grains

Higher transition noise

Exchange coupled small grains

Lower transition noise

Higher transition noise

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Storage Capacity = Areal Density
Track pitch: tp
tp 1
Track density: t [ktpi]
1 p
Bit density: [Gbpi]
B B
Areal density:
1 1 [Gb/in2]
AD  
tp B
Example: 2 TB Desktop Drive – $110
 2 disks of 500 GB each side (4000 Gb each side)
 Diameter of each disk: 3.5” with a 0.75” center hole

 
4000 Gb /  router
2
 rinner
2
 ≈ 440 Gb/in2
 +20% space used for error prevention, so 530 Gb/in2
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 How small is a bit?
 Areal Density: 530 Gb/in2
 Rectangular bits 1:4 aspect ratio ~ 17.5 nm width
 Diameter of human hair ~ 100 µm.
6000X smaller than diameter of human hair!
or less than 100 atoms lined up!

Need a VERY powerful microscope to see

the particles that comprise bits.
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 Bit Size
250 nm

25 nm

Areal Density: ~100 Gbit/in2

Linear Density: ~1010 kFCI

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 Magnetic Media Layer Structures
(Longitudinal vs. Perpendicular)

Longitudinal Media Perpendicular Media

Recording Layer
Magnetic Layer
c-axis in-plane for long. Magnetic Layer
CoCrX(Y) out-of-plane for perp. CoCrX(Y)

Control crystal
orientation of the Stacks of Interlayers
Underlayer magnetic layer (Ru, RuMo, Ti, Ta)
(Cr, CrMo)
Flux return layer
Increase recording Soft Magnetic Underlayer
resolution (for double- (Fe-, Co-, Ni-alloys)
layered media)
NiP
Enhance mechanical NiP
properties of a hard disk

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The Periodic Table

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 TEM Images (Cross-section) of CoCrPtO
(Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Media)

CoCrPtO
Ru

Ta

SUL

Schematic diagram (left) and cross-section TEM image (right) showing

the perpendicular recording media structure

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 TEM Images (Cross-section) of CoCrPtO
(Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Media)

(a) Cross-section TEM image of

CoCrPtO CoCrPtO/Ru-oxide/Ru/Ta/SUL
Ru medium
Ta (b) Plan-view TEM images of the
specimens at various thickness
SUL level

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 CoCrPtO vs CoCrPtB (Plan-view BFTEM Images)

CoCrPt-O (oxide) CoCrPtB

(New: Granular Oxide media) (Conventional)

In CoCrPtO media, grains are isolated by much thicker and distinct grain boundary

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 TEM Images (Plan-view) of CoCrPtO
(Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Media)

10 nm

50 nm

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 Magnetic Co Nano-grains

1010

1120
2020

2130

HRTEM image of Co nano-grains for magnetic media was taken using FEI Tecnai.

by Hossein-Babaei Faraz (Stanford) 19

 Magnetic Co Nano-grains (Titan)

Cs-corrected image from “FEI Titan 80-300”

by Ai Leen Koh (Stanford)
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TEM image of Fe-C nanoparticles

Fe-C Core-shell Nanoparticles

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M-H Scan by SQUID

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Co-C Core-shell Nanoparticles

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Superparamagnetic Behavior of Co-C nanoparticles

M-H Scan

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