EPITAXIAL-GROWTH AND ENHANCED SATURATION MAGNETIZATION OF SINGLE-CRYSTAL CO1-XCRX MEDIA SUITABLE FOR PERPENDICULAR MAGNETIC RECORDING

Highly c-axis oriented, single crystal films of Co1-xCrs have been gro wn epitaxially on mica substrates by e-beam evaporation. The method, u sing a Ru underlayer, is simple and applicable to similar c-axis orien ted, large area growth of the wide range of Co alloys suitable for per pendicular recording. The films show narrow peak widths in X-ray diffr action (Delta theta((00.2)) similar to 1.0-1.50) and their magnetic pr operties are composition dependent. Moreover, for any given Cr concent ration, these single crystal films exhibit the largest saturation magn etization when compared with either sputtered/evaporated samples or fi lms grown under identical conditions on glass/silicon substrates. It i s shown that this enhanced M(s) is directly correlated with the disper sion of the c-axis about the film normal and their narrowest values ar e observed for these epitaxially grown films. X-ray microanalysis show s some inter/intra-granular variation in Cr content, but systematic se gregation trends appropriate for explaining these results have not yet been observed.