Scientific Achievement
A team of Foundry staff and industry users have visualized the behavior of nanoantennas inside heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) memory devices using top-down and bottom-up approaches.
Significance and Impact
This is the first time that nanoantenna behavior has been characterized on an integrated device using these methods. The results will enable next generation hard disk drives to move from development to commercialization.
Research Details
- Researchers from HGST/Western Digital worked with Foundry scientists to characterize the nanoantennas using scanning electron microscopy cathodoluminescence (SEMCL) and scattering scanning near-field optical microscopy (sSNOM) in order to understand the mechanism by which energy is transferred by a nanoantenna into the magnetic media of a HAMR device as thermal energy.
- The research team developed a theoretical model of the system to validate and predict sSNOM experimental results.