Distinctive characteristics of barium ferrite media

Barium ferrite magnetic recording media have demonstrated the capability of achieving much higher recording densities than other particulate media. Even though the best performance is obtained with perpendicularly oriented media, longitudinally oriented and non-oriented Ba-ferrite media also exhibit exceptional recording characteristics. These media have very distinctive magnetic and switching field (SFD) characteristics, exhibiting very small SFD values, almost rectangular remanence loops (indicating no irreversible losses over a wide range of reverse fields), and minor loops very close to the major loop until the driving field becomes almost equal to the coercivity. These unique magnetic and switching field characteristics can explain the very low or negligible demagnetization losses (including recording demagnetization) which we observe in Ba-ferrite media and which result in their outstanding recording performance. The fundamental reasons for these unique magnetic and switching field properties are the predominant high uniaxial crystalline anisotropy of the platelets and their single domain character. On the negative side, the high anisotropy field is directly implicated as the main reason behind the marginal overwrite modulation which characterizes these media.