Perspectives of Magnetic Recording System at 10 Tb/in

The magnetic recording technology started to face superparamagnetism at the areal density of a few 10 s Gb/in 2 . To postpone this physical limitation, the recording configuration has to be changed by either increasing the write capability or reducing the grain number per bit. It had been switched from conventional longitudinal recording to perpendicular recording and will continue changing to other new recording configurations in the future. Beyond 1 Tb/in 2 areal density, the recording system is possible to be either the energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR) or the bit patterned media (BPM). At 10 Tb/in 2 areal density, one of them alone may not be enough and most people believe that EAMR and BPM have to be combined together to make it happen. In this paper, we explore the possible recording configurations at 10 Tb/in 2 and calculate the corresponding design parameters of the recording system.