Rapid thermal magnetic annealing as an emerging technology in field-annealing of thin magnetic films for recording heads

An emerging field where rapid thermal processing (RTP) is now rapidly finding its first acceptance is in the industrial manufacturing of thin-film head devices for magnetic recording. Here soft-magnetic thin-film flux guide structures (usually composed of high-moment alloys containing iron, etc.) are applied onto ceramic substrate wafers (such as Al₂O₃–TiC) of sizes up to 150 mm and subsequently ‘activated' by heating and cooling in a magnetic field.We assessed the advantages of rapid thermal magnetic annealing (RTMA) in a new prototype reactor with an external electromagnet, capable of generating an extremely homogeneous magnetic field of 660 Oe (52.8 kA/m) with field lines parallel across the entire wafer area (150 mm in diameter). Samples with 1 μm thick amorphous iron-alloy layers (Fe₇₇Nb₁₁N₁₀Si₂) sputter-deposited onto ceramic substrates of single-crystalline GGG-garnet (Gd₃Ga₅O₁₂) were conventionally annealed and RTMA-annealed in N₂/H₂ at temperatures between 550 and 700°C. Structural analysis by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron diffraction showed that the enhanced performance of the RTMA-annealed layers is due to the different nanocrystallization kinetics induced by the fast heating and cooling rates of RTMA.The ceramic substrate materials normally used in head manufacturing (such as Al₂O₃–TiC) have favorable grey-body properties with high emissivity (≥0.7) over a wide range of temperatures (25–700°C) and wavelengths (1.5–10 μm), which excludes the difficulties encountered in pyrometric temperature control of infrared-transparent substrates such as silicon. We conclude that RTMA yields superior soft-magnetic materials, where throughput numbers of ≥30 wafers/h are possible.