Thermal stability and switching field of hard/soft-stacked perpendicular media

The time dependence of remanence coercivity and thermal stability were investigated for hard/soft-stacked media consisting of a magnetically hard granular layer underneath a very thin soft layer with a large saturation magnetization, M_s. The values of remanence coercivity at measurement times t′=10³ and 10^-5 s (pulse field) were measured, and defined as H_r and H_r^P. The remanence coercivity on the recording time scale, H_r (1 ns), and the energy barrier, ΔE/kT, were evaluated by fitting H_r and H_r^P to Sharrock's equation taking into account the power law variation of the energy barrier, n. The value of H_r (1 ns) for a (Co-Pt)-SiO₂ (9 nm)/Co-SiO₂ (2 nm) stacked medium with an interfacial coupling control layer was about 9 kOe, which was less than half of that of a (Co-Pt)-SiO₂ (9 nm) conventional medium (=21.3 kOe). The value of ΔE/kT for the stacked medium was about 111 (n=0.7), and was not significantly different from the conventional medium. Moreover, no significant difference in the rate of decrease of H_r with increasing temperature was observed between media with and without interlayers. These results indicate that the use of a thin soft layer with high M_s was effective at significantly reducing H_r with no notable change in thermal stability.