Growth of oblique sputtered Co and CoCrPt thin films for high-density tape recording

In this paper, we report the properties of Co/Cr and CoCrPt/CoCrMn thin films grown by oblique sputtering onto polymer substrates. It is observed that in both cases, the underlayers promote the formation of HCP-structure of the magnetic layers, which results in a high magnetic anisotropy of the films consequently, high coercivities of 200 and 300 kA/m are obtained in the 20nm Co/180nm Cr and 30nm CoCrPt/50nm CoCrMn films, respectively. However, in the case of Co/Cr film, Co grains are relatively large and elongated following the transverse direction while in the case of CoCrPt/CoCrMn film, a tiny columnar structure inclined toward the incident direction is observed. This fact results in a different magnetic behavior of these films.