Trapping Electron Assisted Magnetic Recording

Moving towards 10 Tb/in² areal density, finding a proper recording scheme with enough write-ability is the most challenging task of a magnetic recording system. Some recording schemes with enhanced write-ability, such as HAMR, MAMR, graded media, etc., have been proposed to achieve higher recording density. Here we propose a new alternative approach for enhanced writing-trapping electron assisted magnetic recording (TEAMR). In the TEAMR configuration, an electrical bias is applied to the main pole of the write head with the disk media and the other parts of head slider grounded. As the main pole area is very small, the electrostatic force produced by electrical potential is a few orders smaller than the air bearing force at the rear pad. Therefore, it will not affect the flying performance of the head slider. At the nanometer head media spacing, a very strong electrical field is produced in the head media interface. This strong electrical field will cause free electrons to accumulate (be trapped) at the interfacial surfaces of metallic magnetic grains. These trapped electrons are localized in the surface atoms of magnetic grains and will alter the valance-electron band filling of those surface atoms. For many magnetic materials, the extra band-filling electrons reduce the magnetic anisotropy energy and make it easier to be magnetically switched. In this work, the TEAMR effect was proved by the experiment study on Co alloy based commercial disk media. The first principle calculation on L1₀ ordered FePt crystal shows that the magnetic anisotropy can be reduced to zero with around 0.38 electrons trapped into 1 unit cell of FePt. Further increase in trapped electrons will change the magnetic easy axis from out-of-plane to in-plane, which is considered as a negative magnetic anisotropy. With the magnetic anisotropy reduction at the surface atoms of each grain, micromagnetic simulation result shows that the effective switching field can be reduced to- around 11% of anisotropy field for a 1.6 ? 1.6 ? 3.2 nm³ FePt grain. Thus TEAMR can be another good candidate for energy assisted recording requiring very little modification to the current perpendicular magnetic recording system.