Sputtered pure iron film for soft magnetic layer in perpendicular recording media

Soft magnetic properties of pure iron films deposited by Facing Targets Sputtering apparatus have been investigated under various preparation condition such as argon gas pressure, deposition rate, substrate bias voltage and substrate temperature. It was found that the internal stress in them vanished by adjusting argon gas pressure and bias voltage to the proper value. Considerably good soft magnetic properties, such as saturation magnetization 4πMs as large as 21.5kG and coercivity Hc as small as 3.5Oe have been obtained. High corrosion resistivity was observed in the film without internal stress deposited at low argon gas pressure and proper bias voltage. The degree of c-axis orientation of Co-Cr film deposited onto the iron film was highly affected by the degree of