Pd/Co multilayers for perpendicular magnetic recording

We have demonstrated that Pd/Co metal multilayers have superior perpendicular magnetic recording properties when compared with conventional CoCr perpendicular alloy media. Using a perpendicular contact probe transducer, the multilayers exhibit more than two times the readback signal of CoCr media. For instance, at 145000 flux changes per inch, multilayer media exhibited a track amplitude of 380 μV, compared with 140 μV for conventional media using the same transducer. The multilayers can be made with low roughness suitable for contact recording, and can generate narrow 12 microinch readback pulses with large amplitude. In addition, the multilayers have essentially no dead layer. Many aspects of Pd/Co performance can be predictably optimized for a given set of transducer properties