Near field heat assisted magnetic recording with a planar solid immersion lens

In this paper we present experimental heat assisted magnetic recording results using a planar solid immersion mirror (PSIM) fabricated on an Al2O3-TiC slider. The heads were flown at a velocity of 14 m/s, 20-25 nm above a Co/Pt multilayer medium which was deposited on a 60 mm glass disk. It was found that the track width and carrier-to-noise-ratio (CNR) increased with the applied magnetic field. Recording experiments were also performed with PSIMs terminated with 125 mu m apertures. This led to narrower tracks and smaller CNR values for the same applied fields compared to recording with a PSIM only.