MEDIA REQUIREMENTS AND RECORDING PHYSICS FOR HIGH-DENSITY MAGNETIC RECORDING

Media requirements and recording physics for high density magnetic information storage are reviewed. Relevant aspects concerning the ultimate achievable recording densities for particulate as well as for thin film media are discussed. This review covers the entire range starting from micromagnetics of individual single domain particles, moving over to their magnetic behavior in a particle assembly under particular consideration of the structure being actually obtained in the manufacturing process of recording media, and finally embarking into an outline of recording physics. These considerations are not only carried out for longitudinally and perpendicularly oriented recording media but also for media having an arbitrary orientation of the easy axis of magnetization. All aspects are discussed and illustrated for the first commercially available thin film medium on a flexible substrate, which is the metal evaporated tape, i.e., the obliquely deposited Co-Ni-O layer for the Hi8 video system.