Meeting the demand for more data storage in smaller volumes means using materials made up of ever-smaller magnets, or nanomagnets. One promising¹ material for a potential new generation of recording² media is an alloy³ of iron and platinum⁴ with an ordered crystal structure. Researchers led by Professor Kai Liu and graduate student Dustin Gilbert at the University of California, Davis, have now found a convenient way to make these alloys⁵ and tailor their properties. "The relatively⁶ convenient synthesis conditions, along with the tunable⁷ magnetic properties, make these materials highly desirable for future magnetic recording technologies," said Liu, a professor of physics. The iron-platinum alloy has the ability to retain information even at extremely small nanomagnet sizes, and it is resistant⁸ to heat effects.

 

Previous methods for making the iron-platinum alloys with an ordered crystal structure involved high-temperature treatments that would be difficult to integrate（整合） into the rest of the manufacturing process, Liu said.

 

The researchers, including Liang-Wei Wang and Chih-Huang Lai of the National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, and Timothy Klemmer and Jan-Ulrich Thiele, of Seagate Technologies in Fremont, used a method called atomic-scale multilayer sputtering⁹ to create a material with extremely thin layers of metal, and rapid thermal¹⁰ annealing to convert it into the desirable ordered alloy. They were able to adjust the magnetic properties of the alloy by adding small amounts of copper¹¹ into particular regions of the alloy.

 

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Applied¹² Physics Letters and featured in its Research Highlights. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation Materials World Network Program.

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