Barium and strontium ferrite perpendicular thin film media with a sendust soft magnetic underlayer

The possibility of using sendust (FeAlSi) as the soft magnetic underlayer f or hexagonal barium ferrite (BaM) and strontium ferrite (SrM) was studied. Sendust films were found to retain their soft magnetic properties with a ra pid thermal anneal (RTA) at 800 C for 60 s, which is necessary to crystalli ze the as-deposited amorphous BaM and SrM films. Several film structures wi th sendust films as the soft underlayer were studied and compared. Strong h cp (001) texture and bcc (110) texture were obtained on the BaM(SrM)/Pt/buf fer/FeAlSi/Si multi-layer structure films, as indicated by the strong hcp ( 006), (008) and (0014) reflections for BaM(SrM) layer and bcc (110) reflect ion for the sendust underlayer from X-ray diffraction measurements.