Nonstoichiometric FePt Nanoclusters for Heated Dot Magnetic Recording Media

Heated dot magnetic recording (HDMR) provides a path to increase the areal density of magnetic recording media beyond 4 Tb/in2. HDMR-based recording media requires ultrasmall, noninteracting, and thermally stable magnetic dots with high perpendicular anisotropy. We have synthesized nonstoichiometric Fe60Pt40 nanoclusters with and without a Pt buffer layer on silicon substrates, which shows a reduction in chemical ordering temperatures. The Fe60Pt40 nanoclusters retain the hard magnetic phase up to 1023 K with the coercive field of 1.3 Tesla due to the Pt element compensation from the buffer layer. This compensation of Pt was confirmed through X-ray diffraction (XRD) investigations where two distinct phases of Fe3Pt and FePt3 are observed at elevated annealing temperatures. Micromagnetic simulations were performed to understand the effect of magnetic anisotropy, dipolar interaction, and exchange coupling between the soft magnetic Fe3Pt and hard magnetic FePt. The results imply that nonstoichiometric Fe60Pt40 with the Pt buffer layer facilitates low chemical ordering temperatures retaining the high perpendicular anisotropy with minimal noninteracting behavior, suitable for HDMR.