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Compositional structure analysis of thin film magnetic recording media

MASAAKI FUTAMOTO1

Affiliation

  1. Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University, 1-13-27 Kasuga, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112-8551, Japan

Abstract

Magnetic and recording characteristics depend strongly on the structural and compositional microstructure of thin film media. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has been used to investigate the microstructure. When a chemical analysis equipment using electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) or energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) was combined with the TEM technology, it became possible to study both the detailed compositional and the structural information for a same observation area under a high-magnification condition. The present paper briefly reviews the applications of such TEM technology equipped with EELS or EDX covering the research works reported from middle 80’s to the present. Examples of nm-level chemical analysis are shown for various Co-alloy thin films including a current CoCrPtoxide granular-type perpendicular medium which consists of Co-alloy magnetic crystals of sub-10nm in diameter separated by nonmagnetic amorphous grain boundaries..

Keywords

Thin film recording media, Single crystal film, Composition, Microstructure, TEM, EDX, EELS, Segregation.

Submitted at: Oct. 1, 2009
Accepted at: Nov. 19, 2009

Citation

MASAAKI FUTAMOTO, Compositional structure analysis of thin film magnetic recording media, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials Vol. 11, Iss. 11, pp. 1567-1575 (2009)