Heat-assisted magnetic recording — Micromagnetic modeling of recording media and areal density: A review

Hard disk drives have become the most commonly used mass storage devices because of their low cost and high storage capacity. However, the current perpendicular magnetic recording technology is reaching the physical limit for its areal density capability (ADC) due to superparamagnetism. To accommodate the rapid increase in the volume of digital data produced globally, heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) has been introduced as a next-generation recording technology. In HAMR, a laser locally heats the media to reduce the coercivity, with the information recorded during the cooling process. To investigate the high-temperature magnetization dynamics that occur during this form of recording, computational micromagnetics is a useful tool. This article provides a brief review of micromagnetic modeling for HAMR and summarizes simulation-based studies on HAMR media. A review of these simulation results can serve as a guideline for the prediction of the ADC limit of HAMR.