Soft X-ray characterization of perpendicular recording media

Abstract

Various spectroscopy, imaging, and scattering techniques exploit core-level resonances accessible in the soft X-ray energies to obtain magnetic information in thin films with elemental specificity. In this paper, we describe the emerging technique of resonant soft X-ray small-angle scattering (SAS) as a probe of magnetic and chemical variations in recording media on the nanometer scale. In particular, we characterize the grain size of a CoB-Pd multilayer media and magnetic and chemical grain sizes in perpendicular CoPtCr media.