Effect of inclination direction on recording performance of BPM with inclined anisotropy

Abstract Effect of inclination direction on the recording performance of bit-patterned media with weakly inclined anisotropy was investigated by simulation. Magnetic dots with a size of 15x7.5x5 nm3 were arranged on a soft magnetic underlayer with an areal density of 2.6 Tdot/in2. Saturation magnetization of each dot was assumed to be 1000 emu/cm3. Media with three different inclination directions with an inclination angle of 30 degrees from the film normal, which were down-track inclined, cross-track inclined and cone-state, were investigated for the recording performance using a shielded planar head field. Although the three media exhibited almost the same remanence curve, obtained recording performance indicated different write shift margins. It was found that the write shift margin in the cross-track direction increased for the media with fixed inclined anisotropy axes, but the medium with the inclination direction in the cross-track direction exhibited larger shift margin than that of the down-track inclined medium when the anisotropy field dispersion was increased to 4%, while increase in the write shift margin in the downtrack direction was similar for down- and cross-track inclined media. The cause of the difference was primarily explained by the composite anisotropy of the elongated dot with the shape anisotropy in the cross-track direction.