Tuning Coercivity in CoCrPt-SiO2 Hard Disk Material

In order to increase the storage density of modern computer disk drives and to push the superparamagnetic limit to the smallest achievable bit sizes further, smaller grains with even larger magnetic anisotropies are required, which are accompanied by large coercive fields obstructing the writing process. One route to overcome this problem is to independently reduce the coercive field without altering anisotropy and remanence by tailoring the intergranular exchange in granular CoCrPt-SiO2 films. Here we demonstrate that by means of ion implantation of Co and Ne a continuous reduction of the coercive field can be achieved without significant modification of the remaining magnetic parameters. In addition to the magnetization reversal behavior of the entire film investigated by magneto-optic Kerr effect and SQUID magnetometry, also the magnetic domain configuration in the demagnetized state is imaged by magnetic force microscopy.