Enhancement of grain isolation by interlayer diffusion in AFC media with CrMo spacer layer

It was found that a reduction in M/sub r/t can be obtained in the new antiferromagnetically coupled (AFC) medium with a CrMo spacer layer due to antiferromagnetic (AF) coupling, which is similar to the conventional AFC medium with a Ru spacer layer. From the results of /spl Delta/M and magnetic force microscopy (MFM), it was found that the intergranular exchange coupling decreases when CrMo is used as a spacer layer. Micromagnetic simulations of /spl Delta/M and MFM analyses gave consistent results with experiment, i.e., 1) AFC media with higher intergranular exchange coupling constant have larger magnetic cluster and higher /spl Delta/M peak and 2) the media with higher AF coupling constant have smaller magnetic cluster and smaller /spl Delta/M. In this paper, we propose that the media noise of the AFC media with a CrMo spacer layer may be improved by a reduction in the magnetic cluster size, due to the decrease of the intergranular exchange coupling between magnetic grains.