Fabrication and Characterization of Nanomagnetic Media for Data Storage and Logic Operations

In recent years, current data storage and semiconductors have begun to reach their fundamental limits. In current hard disk drive based data storage technology the size of the magnetic bit that data is stored on has begun to reach it size limits due to the superparamagnetic limit. In semiconductor technologies, devices are beginning to reach their fundamental limits due to the current leakage effect in small devices. If these technologies will continue with the current trends of packing more data/devices into the same area, new technologies need to be developed. In the following pages, two new technologies will be proposed for increasing the areal density of magnetic data storage technologies. After that, three novel approaches to creating logic cells on patterned magnetic media at much higher areal densities than current semiconductor technologies can support. First a study of Co/Pd multilayers as a candidate material for the next generation of magnetic media for a number of applications will be described. Following that, a patterned, three layer, magnetic media made up of magnetic multilayers will be fabricated and tested to show the feasibility of using it for the basis of next generation data storage technologies. Then, three novel approaches to magnetic logic gates using magnetic multilayers based media will be designed, fabricated, and tested using state of the art fabrication and analysis techniques. Each of the proposed magnetic logic cells will consist of a patterned media made up on of two, three, or four stacked magnetic multilayers media. The two layer structures are fabricated to be implemented on current hard disk drives. The three and four stacked structures can be implemented in a number of ways, from hard disk drives to magnetic quantum-dot cellular automata. The latter would allow these logic cells to be integrated with semiconductor technologies to create a hybrid device that utilizes the best aspects of each technology