Towards Terabit/in 2 Magnetic Storage Media
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Towards Terabit/in2 Magnetic Storage Media Dimitris Niarchos1, E. Manios1, and I. Panagiotopoulos2 1 Inst. of Materials Science, NCSR Demokritos, Patriarchou Gregoriou & Neapoleos, Ag. Paraskevi, Athens, 15310, Greece 2 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ioannina, Ioannina 45110, Ioannina, 45110, Greece ABSTRACT In modern society there is an almost insatiable demand for ever increasing storage capacities in computers and consumer electronics. Magnetic recording is the dominant storage technology and the hard disk, due to its versatility, is becoming a pervasive device in various applications. The soaring demand arises from data-intensive computer applications, including graphics, animation, multimedia and desktop publishing, to which can be added a growing market for non-PC consumer devices such as set-top boxes, cameras, mobile phones, laser printers and satellite navigation systems. In response to this demand the hard disk drive manufacturers have come forward with spectacular increase in storage capacities and densities over the last decade. It is currently projected that the evolution of conventional perpendicular recording storage density in the hard disk industry will reach a limit of 500 Gbit/in2, while further progress will require major breakthroughs and alternative technologies. In this presentation we will review the state-of-the-art in magnetic recording media and we will discuss the future approaches to reach densities in excess of 1 Tbit/in2 densities along the three axes: a) self-assembled coercive nanoparticles, b) exchange spring media and percolated media, and c) bit-patterned media (nanoscale patterning). This entails resolving several conflicting requirements with regard to signal to noise ratio (SNR), writability and thermal stability of these new promising systems.
INTRODUCTION Today, despite recent advantages in solid-state memory, disk-based magnetic recording remains the dominant storage mode. The ever-increasing demand for data-intensive computer applications, including graphics, animation, and multimedia is currently spreading to small consumer devices such as set-top boxes, cameras, mobile phones and satellite navigation systems. In response to this increasing demand the hard disk drive manufacturers have come forward with increasingly smaller, lighter, cheaper and faster hard disk drives achieving a spectacular increase in storage capacities and densities. Especially during the period 1990-2000 an increase of recording density (expressed in bits per square inch) in excess of 100 % annually was achieved, compared to 30%, in the previous decades (Fig.1).
Figure 1. Evolution of magnetic recording areal density with time (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies). However at such high storage densities the stability of recorded data against thermal decay is becoming the major limiting factor in further increase of storage capacity: as the magnetic entities of the medium become too small, the magnetic anisotropy energy, the energy barrier that keeps the
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