DEPOSITION OF CO-CR FILMS WITH EXCELLENT C-AXIS ORIENTATION AND UNIFORM THICKNESS FOR RIGID DISKS USING COMPACT SPUTTERING APPARATUS

Co-Cr films deposited at excessively low Ar pressure P-Ar often reveal critically poor c-axis orientation for the magnetron sputtering syste m. It has been found that high energy Ar atoms recoiled from the targe t plane would bombard heavily the growing films and degrade films' cry stallographic texture. On the other hand, the facing targets sputterin g (FTS) system could deposit the Co-Cr films with the excellent c-axis orientation even at P-Ar as low as 0.15mTorr by optimizing the distan ce between targets D-t-t. For example, the optimum value of D-t-t was 105mm for the targets of 100x100mm(2) in size. The optimum conditions in FTS system were described for deposition of the Co-Cr films with th e fine microstructure and the excellent c-axis orientation preferable as perpendicular recording layers, and the compact FTS apparatus of 25 0x250x200mm(3) in size was designed in this study.