Abstract
The impact of thin film materials science on disk-drive storage technology is in an evolutionary stage. The transition from ferrite heads and particulate disks to thin film disks and heads is in progress. This paper reviews the novel thin film structures, deposited by sputtering or evaporation, for use in direct-access-storage devices. An overview is presented to describe the issues involved in the deposition of soft magnetic materials, such as permalloy and amorphous alloy films, for yoke structures in the recording head. The future generation of film disks requires high coercivity and high induction. The thin film media must also be smooth and thinner than the present particulate surfaces to achieve higher recording densities. The relationship between deposition, structure, and magnetic properties of oxide and metal film media for longitudinal recording is described. Perpendicular recording appears to be the most promising technology to achieve ultrahigh recording densities (200 kBPI). Experimental results for CoCr, Co-X, and CoCr-X alloy films are presented and the correlation between structure and magnetic properties is emphasized. Research in magnetic materials for storage applications is an exciting area of materials science which may rival semiconductor materials studies in the future. © 1986 American Vacuum Society