A growth model for polycrystalline thin film media: Comparison of bicrystal and unicrystal grain structures

A medium model with random grain structure and in-plane grain area distribu tion has been developed. In this paper, this model is extended to study the grain size distribution of bicrystal thin film media. In most cases, the s imulation shows that the grain area distribution to be close to a log-norma l distribution, Various combinations of minimum nucleation distances of uni crystal underlayer and bicrystal magnetic layer are investigated. The relat ive grain area of both layers is investigated by changing the number of nuc leation sites. Assuming recombination of adjacent grains with parallel anis otropy axes, the resulting bicrystal grain area distribution width is insen sitive to the value of the minimum nucleation distance and only slightly de creases with increasing average area of the bicrystal grains.