Effects of ECR ion shower treatment on the magnetic and recording properties of CoCrTaPt thin film media

The electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR) microwave plasma nitrogen or oxygen ions shower treatment on the NiP/Al substrates before sputtering leads to an increase in coercivity of CoCrTaPt/Cr isotropic media and a decrease in coercivity and OR of oriented media. And also we found that the medium noise and NLTS of the media become lower by using the substrates with ion shower treatment. The study of magnetic properties and microstructure of the media with and without ion shower treatment suggested that the improvement of the magnetic and recording properties of the CoCrTaPt/Cr films owing likely to the decrease in the intergranular magnetic coupling and the uniformity of the magnetic anisotropy. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis indicated that the increase of the structural feature of N-H and N-O contributed to the improvement of them.