Integrating magnetic heads with plasmonic nanostructures in multilayer configurations

Abstract

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is an emerging technology that has increased the areal density of conventional recording techniques for hard disc drives. Integrated heads have enabled this increase through localized heating of the recording media during the recording process. One of the problems in integrating magnetic heads with plasmonic nanotransducers is the resulting losses. In this study, multilayer configurations with gold thin-films near magnetic thin-films are investigated to minimize radiative and load-induced losses. The effect of load-induced damping of the magnetic film and evanescent coupling is identified with the intensity enhancement near the magnetic films. It is shown that a higher intensity enhancement can be obtained by minimizing radiative and load-induced losses through adjusting layer thicknesses in multilayer configurations.