Effects of Ta addition in CoCrTa intermediate layer on Co-alloy thin film media

The Ta content in the CoCrTa_x intermediate layer effectively influences the crystallographic texture, the grain size and the magnetic properties of NiAl/CrV/CoCrTa/CoCrTaPt thin film media. The thin film media have a preferred in-plane Co (10.0) texture and about 10 nm of mean grain size with more uniform distribution, when the Ta content is in the range of 0-5 at.%. Once Ta content exceeds 7 at.%, the texture of the Co-alloy changed from in-plane to out-of-plane, the grain size increased with wide distribution and the coercivity decreased dramatically. It was found that the grain size becomes small; coercivity, exchange decoupling and thermal stability increase; and the switching volume is reasonably small as the Ta content is increased from 0 to 5 at.%