High Density Magnetic Recording Revealed by Hitachi’s Researchers

Abstract:
Plasmonic devices are capable of efficiently confining and enhancing optical fields, serving as a bridge between the realm of diffraction-limited optics and the nanoscale. Specifically, a plasmonic device can be used to locally heat a recording medium for data storage. Ideally, the recording medium would consist of individually addressable and non-interacting entities, a configuration that has been regarded as the ultimate future hard-drive technology. Here, we describe a plasmonic nano-antenna that is fully integrated into a magnetic recording head and its use for thermally assisted magnetic recording on both continuous and fully-ordered patterned media using nanosecond pulses in a static tester configuration. In the case of patterned media at 1.5 Pb m-2 (~1 Tb inch-2) with 24nm track pitch, we show ideally written bits without disturbing neighbouring tracks. We find a dramatic improvement in track width and optical efficiency compared to continuous media and show that this is largely due to advantageous near-field optical effects.

Authors:
Barry C. Stipe, Timothy C. Strand, Chie C. Poon, Hamid Balamane, Thomas D. Boone, Jordan A. Katine, Jui-Lung Li, Vijay Rawat, Hiroaki Nemoto, Akemi Hirotsune, Olav Hellwig, Ricardo Ruiz, Elizabeth Dobisz, Dan S. Kercher, Neil Robertson, Thomas R. Albrecht  &  Bruce D. Terris from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, San Jose Research Center, and Hitachi Ltd., Storage Technology Research Center, Research and Development Group, Odawara-shi, Kanagawa-ken, Japan.