VMn underlayer for CoCrPt Longitudinal Media

In this study, effects of novel VMn underlayer on magnetic properties of CoCrPt/VMn longitudinal medium was studied and compared with those of CoCrPt/Cr medium. It was found that the VMn film had (200) preferred orientation and the lattice constant was about 0.2967 nm, which is slightly larger than that of the Cr, 0.2888 nm. The grain size of VMn film was 9.3 nm at 30 nm thickness, and this is about 38 % smaller than that of a similarly deposited Cr film. The CoCrPt/VMn films showed higher coercivity in comparison with the CoCrPt/Cr films. The coercivity increase seems to be attributed to the increased Co (11.0) texture, improved lattice matching between Co (11.0) and VMn (200), and lower stacking fault density. Mn must have diffused into the CoCrPt magnetic layer more uniformly rather than preferentially along grain boundaries this reduced Ms at higher substrate temperature