Highly ordered magnetic materials with high perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), such as the L10 ordered FePt, and new recording technologies, such as bit patterned media (BPM), have been proposed as solutions to the media trilemma problem and provide promising strategies towards future high-density magnetic data storage media. L10 ordered FePt thin films can provide the necessary high PMA. However, the ordering of this material perpendicular to the plane of the films remains challenging since high-temperature and time-consuming processes are required. In this work, a remote plasma sputtering system has been used for the investigation of FePt thin films in order to understand if the greater control of process parameters offered by this system can lead to enhanced ordering in L10 FePt thin films at low temperatures compared with conventional dc magnetron approaches. More specifically, the effect of the different substrate temperatures and the target bias voltages on the ordering, the microstructure and the magnetic properties of FePt thin films was investigated. Highly ordered FePt thin films were successfully fabricated after post-annealing processes and were patterned into arrays of FePt islands. This patterning process was carried out with e-beam lithography and ion milling. Initial MFM measurements of these islands showed their single-domain structure for all the island sizes, which indicated the high PMA of the FePt. Magnetometry measurements were also carried out with a novel polar magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) system which was designed and built during this project. This system has unique capabilities which are: a) the application of uniform magnetic field up to 2 Tesla, b) the rotation of the field to an arbitrary angle and c) the use of lasers of four different wavelengths. The combination of these abilities enabled measurements on ordered FePt thin films and patterned media which can pave the way for further highly sensitive measurements on magnetic thin films and nanostructures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:713561 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Zygridou, Smaragda |
| Contributors | Nutter, Paul |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/fabrication-and-characterisation-of-l10-ordered-fept-thin-films-and-bit-patterned-media(838fa936-fad2-422a-a1dc-ab852f77b6a6).html |
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