Magnetic recording media with magnetic bit regions patterned by ion irradiation

Abstract

A patterned magnetic recording disk has a magnetic recording layer patterned into discrete magnetic and nonmagnetic regions having substantially the same chemical composition. The nonmagnetic regions have a chemically-ordered L12 crystalline structure and the magnetic regions have a chemically-disordered crystalline structure. The chemically-ordered intermetallic compound FePt3, which is nonferromagnetic, is rendered ferromagnetic by ion irradiation. This FePt3 material can be patterned by irradiating local regions through a mask to create magnetic regions that serve as the magnetic bits. The ions pass through the openings in the mask and impact the chemically-ordered FePt3 in selected regions corresponding to the pattern of holes in the mask. The ions disrupt the ordering of the Fe and Pt atoms in the unit cell and transform the FePt3 into magnetic regions corresponding to the mask pattern, with the regions of the film not impacted by the ions retaining their chemically-ordered structure.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.