Investigation of high moment FeCo films for head writer applications

Potential use of FeCo alloys in high moment inductive writer heads is limited by large values of magnetostriction and coercivity. Recent work shows that metallic seed layers, including Ru, improved the soft properties of sputter-deposited FeCo by reducing the grain size of the deposited FeCo films. We carried out a series of experiments to investigate the effect of Ru, Ta and NiFe seed layers and sputtering parameters on the properties of deposited FeCo films. The stress, magnetostriction, coercivity, anisotropy and saturation magnetization have also been studied as a function of seed layer thickness, FeCo thickness, number of laminations and lamination thickness.