Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of the effect of the exchange control layer thickness in CoPtCrB/CoPtCrSiO granular media

•MH hysteresis loops obtained by a hybrid kinetic Monte Carlo simulation give excellent agreement with loops obtained by experimental vibrating sample magnetometer measurements on dual layer CoPtCrB/CoPtCrSiO media.•A quantitative relationship between the thickness of the exchange control layer separating the layers and the effective exchange constant between the layers is obtained.•The comparison between the simulation and experiment allows other material properties such as energy barriers and switching fields to be calculated, which is very essential in optimizing the performance of magnetic media, but which are nevertheless difficult to access experimentally. A hybrid Landau Lifshitz Gilbert/kinetic Monte Carlo algorithm is used to simulate experimental magnetic hysteresis loops for dual layer exchange coupled composite media. The calculation of the rate coefficients and difficulties arising from low energy barriers, a fundamental problem of the kinetic Monte Carlo method, are discussed and the methodology used to treat them in the present work is described. The results from simulations are compared with experimental vibrating sample magnetometer measurements on dual layer CoPtCrB/CoPtCrSiO media and a quantitative relationship between the thickness of the exchange control layer separating the layers and the effective exchange constant between the layers is obtained. Estimates of the energy barriers separating magnetically reversed states of the individual grains in zero applied field as well as the saturation field at sweep rates relevant to the bit write speeds in magnetic recording are also presented. The significance of this comparison between simulations and experiment and the estimates of the material parameters obtained from it are discussed in relation to optimizing the performance of magnetic storage media.