UC Riverside

L10-ordered FePt thin films are a leading candidate for next-generation magnetic recording, such as bit-patterned media (BPM), heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), and multilevel three-dimensional (ML3D) magnetic recording, because of their excellent material properties. Its high magnetocrystalline anisotropy of ~ 10^8 ergs/cm^3 allows for grain sizes less than a few nanometers while maintaining good thermal stability. It also has been demonstrated that L10-FePt can achieve coercivity greater than 10 Tesla. However, achieving the L10-phase requires post-annealing and/or deposition at elevated substrate temperature. In this work, the magnetic and microstructural properties of FePt thin films were investigated and improved for the use in perpendicular magnetic recording. FePt thin films were then fabricated on pre-patterned substrates for the use in BPM, with a heat sink layer for the use in HAMR, and with two magnetic layers for the use in ML3D magnetic recording.