Ultra-High-Density Magnetic Recording: Storage Materials and Media Designs

Magnetic recording is presently the leading technology for mass data storage. Its dominant role has been reinforced by the success of cloud computing, which requires huge amounts of data to be stored and managed on a multitude of servers. Nonetheless, the hard-disk storage industry is presently at a crossroad as the current magnetic recording technologies are unable to achieve storage densities beyond 1Tbit/in2. Pushing the recording density to the terabit regime requires new storage materials, novel recording schemes and media designs in order to solve signal-to-noise ratio, thermal stability and writability issues. In this book, worldwide experts from university, public research institutions and industry collaborate to illustrate the most recent advances in magnetic recording from the media perspective and to highlight the future prospects of the technology. Theoretical, experimental and technological aspects are covered in a clear and comprehensive way making the book a reference for final year undergraduates, post-graduates and research professionals in the magnetic recording area. The fundamentals of magnetism and magnetic recording are introduced in the first two Chapters, which pose the basis for a better understanding of the following chapters. Chapters 3 describes the main features of conventional perpendicular recording media, while the most promising technologies and materials for next generation magnetic recording are extensively treated in Chapters 4 to 7. Techniques and protocols for magnetic characterization of perpendicular recording media are illustrated in Chapter 8. Finally, Chapter 9 gives an overview of the emerging classes of magnetic memories.