Magnetic force microscopy measurements of skew angle dependencies in perpendicular media

Today, one of the most critical issues in implementing perpendicular recording is believed to be the excessive sensitivity of a typical perpendicular recording system to the skew angle. In perpendicular data storage, the recording is expected to be produced in the effective gap near the trailing edge of the main pole of a single pole head (SPH). In this paper, magnetic force microscopy (MFM) is utilized to study the skew angle effects in perpendicular media with a CoCr-based hard layer and a Permalloy soft underlayer.