Shikha Jain

Modification of the structural and magnetic properties of granular FePt films by seed layer conditioning

The steadily increasing amount of digital information necessitates the availability of reliable high capacity magnetic data storage. Here, future hard disk drives with extended areal storage densities beyond 1.0 Tb/in2 are envisioned by using high anisotropy granular and chemically L10-ordered FePt (002) perpendicular media within a heat-assisted magnetic recording scheme. Perpendicular texturing of the [001] easy axes of the individual grains can be achieved by using MgO seed layers. It is therefore investigated, if and how an Ar+ ion irradiation of the MgO seed layer prior to the deposition of the magnetic material influences the MgO surface properties and hereby the FePt [001] texture. Structural investigations reveal a flattening of the seed layer surface accompanied by a change in the morphology of the FePt grains. Moreover, the fraction of small second layer particles and the degree of coalescence of the primarily deposited FePt grains strongly increases. As for the magnetic performance, this result...

Influence of chemical ordering on the thermal conductivity and electronic relaxation in FePt thin films in heat assisted magnetic recording applications

We report on the out-of-plane thermal conductivities of tetragonal L10 FePt (001) easy-axis and cubic A1 FePt thin films via time-domain thermoreflectance over a temperature range from 133 K to 500 K. The out-of-plane thermal conductivity of the chemically ordered L10 phase with alternating Fe and Pt layers is ~23% greater than the thermal conductivity of the disordered A1 phase at room temperature and below. However, as temperature is increased above room temperature, the thermal conductivities of the two phases begin to converge. Molecular dynamics simulations on model FePt structures support our experimental findings and help shed more light into the relative vibrational thermal transport properties of the L10 and A1 phases. Furthermore, unlike the varying temperature trends in the thermal conductivities of the two phases, the electronic scattering rates in the out-of-plane direction of the two phases are similar for the temperature range studied in this work.

Atomic resolution strain analysis in highly textured FePt thin films

In this work, we present a detailed investigation of FePt-substrate interfaces and their influence towards the microstructural and magnetic configurations of the resulting metallic films. Discontinuous FePt films of roughly 15 nm thickness are deposited at 750 °C on MgO, MgAl2O4, SrTiO3, and (La,Sr)(Al,Ta)O3 single-crystalline substrates. All of these films mainly show out-of-plane textured FePt islands; however, fractions of L12 and in-plane oriented crystals are observed for the films on substrates with reduced lattice mismatch. Reduced easy axis coercivities and enhanced hard axis remanence values affirm this observation. Moreover, quantitative high-resolution transmission electron microscope analysis reveals that the reduced lattice mismatch results in a decreased density of dislocations, especially misfit dislocations, at the FePt-substrate interface. To further extend the research, carbon-doped FePt+32%C films are deposited on single-crystalline and sputtered MgO at 750 °C and 650 °C, respectively, ...

Optical transmission modulation by disk-shaped ferromagnetic particles

Lithographically defined iron-nickel disks 1 micron in diameter and 60 nm in thickness with a spin-vortex ground state are used to achieve magnetic field-driven light modulation by passing the light through an aqueous solution of magnetic disks with controlled orientations. We demonstrate a significant improvement of the accessible modulation frequency over 60 Hz with a single modulating magnetic field of up to 1 kHz with alternating (ac) bi-directional field.

Curie Temperature Distribution in FePt Granular Media

The Curie temperature distribution is an important parameter affecting transition noise in heat-assisted magnetic recording. In this paper, we follow up on our recent report on a technique to evaluate the Curie temperature distribution and provide modeling that validates the method as well as provides the experimental bounds for its validity. Thermal modeling is used to determine whether the technique is sensitive to extrinsic sources of grain temperature variations, such as distributions in thermal boundary resistance. The technique is applied to a variety of FePt granular media films of varying alloy composition and chemical ordering, and we find the Curie temperature distribution to depend primarily on grain ordering kinetics. We also present results of grain switching probability as a function of the applied magnetic field and find a non-trivial dependence on the alloy magnetization.

Vortex dynamics and frequency splitting in vertically coupled nanomagnets

We explored the dynamic response of a vortex core in a circular nanomagnet by manipulating its dipole-dipole interaction with another vortex core confined locally on top of the nanomagnet. A clear frequency splitting is observed corresponding to the gyrofrequencies of the two vortex cores. The peak positions of the two resonance frequencies can be engineered by controlling the magnitude and direction of the external magnetic field. Both experimental and micromagnetic simulations show that the frequency spectra for the combined system is significantly dependent on the chirality of the circular nanomagnet and is asymmetric with respect to the external bias field. We attribute this result to the strong dynamic dipole-dipole interaction between the two vortex cores, which varies with the distance between them. The possibility of having multiple states in a single nanomagnet with vertical coupling could be of interest for magnetoresistive memories.

Spin Vortex Resonance in Non-planar Ferromagnetic Dots

In planar structures, the vortex resonance frequency changes little as a function of an in-plane magnetic field as long as the vortex state persists. Altering the topography of the element leads to a vastly different dynamic response that arises due to the local vortex core confinement effect. In this work, we studied the magnetic excitations in non-planar ferromagnetic dots using a broadband microwave spectroscopy technique. Two distinct regimes of vortex gyration were detected depending on the vortex core position. The experimental results are in qualitative agreement with micromagnetic simulations.

Femtosecond Magneto-optics of FePt nanocrystals for Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording

We report about the magnetization dynamics in L10 FePt discs, designed for Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording. We also determine the different nonlinear behaviors of the coercive field and saturation magnetization with increasing laser pulse energy.