Epitaxial Co80Pt20Films with Columnar Grains and Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy at Ambient Temperature

Ordered CO₃Pt film is a promising material for high density recording media, due to its magnetocrystalline anisotropy constant being higher than that of current CoCrPt recording materials by a factor of around 10 times. Furthermore, the manufacturing temperature of CO₃Pt used for obtaining high perpendicular magnetic properties is similar to that used in current hard disk manufacture. However, single-layered CO₃Pt films incline towards in-plane magnetic anisotropy or random orientation [1], which cannot be utilized in perpendicular magnetic recording applications. It has been reported that Co-rich Co-Pt films with high perpendicular magnetic properties can be achieved by introducing a Pt underlayer [2] or Ru/Pt bilayer [3]. However, the expensive Pt layer in the films would result in excessively high cost.