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Grazing-incidence optical magnetic recording with super-resolution

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is often considered the next major step in the storage industry: it is predicted to increase the storage capacity, the read/write speed and the data lifetime of future hard disk drives. However, despite more than a decade of development work, the reliability i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Scheunert, Gunther, Cohen, Sidney R, Kullock, René, McCarron, Ryan, Rechev, Katya, Kaplan-Ashiri, Ifat, Bitton, Ora, Dawson, Paul, Hecht, Bert, Oron, Dan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Beilstein-Institut 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5238626/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28144562
http://dx.doi.org/10.3762/bjnano.8.4
Descripción
Sumario:Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is often considered the next major step in the storage industry: it is predicted to increase the storage capacity, the read/write speed and the data lifetime of future hard disk drives. However, despite more than a decade of development work, the reliability is still a prime concern. Featuring an inherently fragile surface-plasmon resonator as a highly localized heat source, as part of a near-field transducer (NFT), the current industry concepts still fail to deliver drives with sufficient lifetime. This study presents a method to aid conventional NFT-designs by additional grazing-incidence laser illumination, which may open an alternative route to high-durability HAMR. Magnetic switching is demonstrated on consumer-grade CoCrPt perpendicular magnetic recording media using a green and a near-infrared diode laser. Sub-500 nm magnetic features are written in the absence of a NFT in a moderate bias field of only μ(0)H = 0.3 T with individual laser pulses of 40 mW power and 50 ns duration with a laser spot size of 3 μm (short axis) at the sample surface – six times larger than the magnetic features. Herein, the presence of a nanoscopic object, i.e., the tip of an atomic force microscope in the focus of the laser at the sample surface, has no impact on the recorded magnetic features – thus suggesting full compatibility with NFT-HAMR.