Microstructure and Crystalline Texture Quality of $L1_{0}$ Ordered Fe-Pt-Ag-C Alloy Recording Media

Fe-Pt-Ag-SiO₂ and Fe-Pt-Ag-C granular recording media with an L1₀ ordered structure were fabricated using an in-line sputtering system with full-surface alloy targets. To understand the degree of ordering, the x-ray diffraction intensity ratio of a superlattice peak to a fundamental peak was measured for various samples. Some samples showed large intensity ratios despite having low anisotropy energy. This can be explained by the simple theory that the relative intensity at a low diffraction angle increases for samples with weaker preferred orientation. That is, the intensity ratio is affected not only by the degree of ordering but also by the crystalline texture quality. The larger intensity ratio of Fe-Pt-Ag-C media than that of Fe-Pt-Ag-SiO₂ media was interpreted as the degraded Fe-Pt(001) texture of Fe-Pt-Ag-C media. Thus, good Fe-Pt(001) texture needs to be achieved without deteriorating the well-isolated granular structure in Fe-Pt-Ag-C media.