Thermally stable CGC perpendicular recording media with Pt-rich CoPtCr layer

We recently proposed a novel perpendicular medium structure that consisted of a continuous layer and a granular layer, referred to as coupled granular continuous (CGC) media, to optimize the medium noise and thermal stability. These media used Co/Pt multilayers as the continuous layer. In this study, a Pt-rich CoPt22Cr22 alloy film with poor Co-Cr phase segregation is employed as the continuous layer instead of the multilayers, to demonstrate the general concept of the CGC structure. All CGC media had a continuous layer, a Pt buffer layer, and a common 12.5-nm-thick granular layer (CoCr18Pt12) on a soft magnetic underlayer.