Magnetic recording devices, deposition

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in electrochemical deposition, due mainly to three new technologies (1) metal deposition for the fabrication of integrated circuits, (2) deposition for magnetic recording devices (heads, disks), and (3) deposition of multilayer structures. 

Patents exist for the deposition of Ni/P, Cr/P, Fe/P, Fe/Cr/P, Ni/Cr/P and other alloys which are microhard and corrosion resistant. The amorphous deposits can in many cases be rendered CTystal-line by suitable heat treatment. Electrochemically deposited thin films with compositions such as Co32Ni55RegP7, CojiNijgPy and Co34Ni59P, can be used for high-density magnetic recording devices (Section 12.19). 

A variety of nanomaterials have been synthesized by many researchers using anodic aluminum oxide film as either a template or a host material e.g., magnetic recording media (13,14), optical devices (15-18), metal nanohole arrays (19), and nanotubes or nanofibers of polymer, metal and metal oxide (20-24). No one, however, had tried to use anodic aluminum oxide film to produce carbon nanotubes before Kyotani et al. (9,12), Parthasarathy et al. (10) and Che et al. (25) prepared carbon tubes by either the pyrolytic carbon deposition on the film or the carbonization of organic polymer in the pore of the film. The following section describes the details of the template method for carbon nanotube production. 

In the case of perpendicular recording media the device consists of recording layer with a perpendicular anisotropy, a soft magnetic underlayer (SUL), and an intermediate layer. The SUL is essential for improving the performance of perpendicular recording media. Electroless deposition is very suitable for the production of SUL. 

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