Multimetal-Substituted Epsilon-Iron Oxide ε-Ga0.31Ti0.05Co0.05Fe1.59O3 for Next-Generation Magnetic Recording Tape in the Big-Data Era

From the viewpoints of large capacity, long-term guarantee, and low cost, interest in magnetic recording tapes has undergone a revival as an archive storage media for big data. Herein, we prepared a new series of metal-substituted E-Fe2O3, E-(Ga0.31Ti0.05Co0.05Fe1.59O3)-Ti-III-Co-IV-Fe-II-O-III, nanoparticles with an average size of 18nm. Ga, Ti, and Co cations tune the magnetic properties of E-Fe2O3 to the specifications demanded for a magnetic recording tape. The coercive field was tuned to 2.7kOe by introduction of single-ion anisotropy on Co-II (S=3/2) along the c-axis. The saturation magnetization was increased by 44% with Ga-III (S=0) and Ti-IV (S=0) substitution through the enhancement of positive sublattice magnetizations. The magnetic tape media was fabricated using an actual production line and showed a very sharp signal response and a remarkably high signal-to-noise ratio compared to the currently used magnetic tape.