Effects of rapid thermal annealing on nanostructure, texture and magnetic properties of granular FePt:Ag films for perpendicular recording (invited).

We report effects of rapid thermal annealing on nanostructure, texture, and magnetic properties of granular FePt:Ag films. It was found that the orientations of FePt grains were dependent strongly on the as-deposited multilayer structure and the annealing processes. Through the control of the annealing processes, (001) textured L(1)0 granular FePt:Ag films were obtained. Magnetic measurements revealed that saturation magnetization M[SUBs], perpendicular coercivity H[SUBc], and remanence ratio M[SUBr]/M[SUBs], were also dependent on the annealing temperature, annealing time and Ag content. Perpendicular H[SUBc] values increased from 1.5 to 15 kOe when the annealing temperature changed from 400 to 600 °C for 600 s. Perpendicular H[SUBc] values remained about 11 kOe when the annealing time changed from 5 to 600 s. The effect of Ag content on magnetic properties is reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]