Magnetic recording on patterned media

The storage density of conventional thin film recording media, where each bit is comprised of several hundred grains, is limited by superparmagnetism, since thermal excitation of the magnetization may degrade recorded information. Patterned magnetic media where magnetic bits are recorded on pre-defined, single-domain islands is one of the proposed approaches for extending magnetic storage densities beyond the limit set by thermal decay for conventional media. In this paper we discuss writing and reading from single domain magnetic islands with a conventional recording head, compare the performance to unpatterned media, and present a possible manufacturable approach to achieving run-scale patterning over disk sized areas.