Focused Ion Beam Milled CoPt Magnetic Force Microscopy Tips for High Resolution Domain Images

Authors

L. Gao, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Lanping Yue, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
T. Yokota, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Ralph Skomski, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Sy-Hwang Liou, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
H. Takahoshi, Akita University, JapanFollow
Hitoshi Saito, Akita University, JapanFollow
S. Ishio, Akita University, JapanFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

7-1-2004

Comments

Published in IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 40, NO. 4 (JULY 2004), pp. 2194-2196. Copyright 2004 IEEE. Used by permission.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2004.829173

Abstract

Abstract—High-coercivity CoPt magnetic force microscope tips have been modified by focused ion beam milling to improve the resolution of magnetic domain images. The magnetic materials around the apex have been removed, leaving a 30-nm diameter magnetic particle at the tip end. Due to the smaller amount of magnetic material, the stray field from this new tip is significantly reduced, and the spatial resolution of the magnetic domain images is improved. The tip is used to obtain high-resolution domain images of a CoCrPt-SiO2/Ru perpendicular recording medium with linear recording densities from 800 to 1000 kfci. Magnetic patterns of 900 kfci, corresponding to a bit size of 28 nm, are well resolved. From the analysis of the power spectrum of the track profiles for these images, a spatial resolution as good as 11 nm under ambient conditions with a commercial magnetic force microscope is achieved.