Patterned perpendicular magnetic recording medium with data islands having a flux channeling layer below the recording layer

A patterned perpendicular magnetic recording disk comprising:

• a substrate;
• a soft underlayer (SUL) of soft magnetically permeable material on the substrate;
• a plurality of discrete islands on the SUL arranged in a pattern of generally concentric data tracks, each island comprising a flux channeling layer (FCL), a perpendicular magnetic recording layer (RL), and a nonmagnetic separation layer (SL) between the FCL and the RL for preventing ferromagnetic coupling between the FCL and the RL, the FCL being located between the SUL and the RL and formed of a material having an anisotropy field lower than the anisotropy field of the RL and a magnetization higher than the magnetization of the RL, and wherein the RL is selected from a chemically-ordered alloy selected from alloys of FePt, CoPt, FePd, CoPd, CoPt3 and CoPd3, a chemically-ordered L10 or L11 phase alloy selected from FePt—X and CoPt—X, where the element X is selected from the group consisting of Ni, Au, Cu, Pd and Ag, and a multilayer selected from the group consisting of Co/Pt, Co/Pd, Co/Ni, Fe/Pt and Fe/Pd multilayers;
• and
• a nonmagnetic exchange break layer (EBL) between the SUL and the islands for preventing ferromagnetic coupling between the SUL and the FCL in the islands.