Deposition of Co-Cr films with excellent c-axis orientation and uniform thickness for rigid disks using compact sputtering apparatus

Co-Cr films deposited at excessively low Ar pressure P_Ar often reveal critically poor c-axis orientation for the magnetron sputtering system. It has been found that high energy Ar atoms recoiled from the target plane would bombard heavily the growing films and degrade films´ crystallographic texture. On the other hand, the facing targets sputtering (FTS) system could deposit the Co-Cr films with the excellent c-axis orientation even at P_Ar as low as 0.15 mTorr by optimizing the distance between targets D_t-t. For example, the optimum value of D_t-t was 105 mm for the targets of 100×100 mm² in size. The optimum conditions in FTS system were described for deposition of the Co-Cr films with the fine microstructure and the excellent c-axis orientation preferable as perpendicular recording layers, and the compact FTS apparatus of 250×250×200 mm³ in size was designed in this study