Prevention of dewetting during annealing of FePt films for bit patterned media applications

We investigated different fabrication methods for (002) textured high anisotropy L10-FePt thin continuous films. While depositing at elevated temperature or post-annealing yields discontinuous or very rough films unsuitable for bit patterned media (BPM) fabrication, post-annealing with an additional SiO2 cap layer results in smooth continuous L10-FePt thin films that can be used for patterning. The SiO2 layer can be removed after annealing without significantly damaging the FePt, thus allowing additional deposition of lower anisotropy layers for forming exchange coupled composite or other layered BPM structures.