Fuji Electric Device Technology Is the First in the Industry to Begin Mass-Production of Exchange Coupled Composite (ECC) Media

Fuji Electric Device Technology Co., Ltd. (“FDT”) (President: Hisao Shigekane) has announced today that it has became the first in the industry to have successfully commercialized and started shipment of exchange coupled composite (ECC) media in July 2008, which was moved forward from September 2008. ECC glass media of 2.5”/250GB, which has the industry’s largest recording capacity, is also scheduled to be mass-produced beginning from September 2008.

At present, perpendicular magnetic recording media has the highest recording density in the disk media for hard disk drives. As demand for large recording density increases, various new media using recording methods that enable higher recording density than that of conventional perpendicular magnetic recording media have been developed, including ECC, discrete and thermal assisted media. Of which, ECC media has drastically improved writing performance by selecting more appropriate materials and layer structure for the top magnetic layer while reducing crystal grain size of the lower magnetic layer.

FDT has successfully developed ECC media that achieves twice higher write-ability than that of conventional perpendicular magnetic recording media (according to our comparison) by modifying recording layer of conventional perpendicular magnetic recording media. We also replaced materials for bottom magnetic layer with those with higher magnetic anisotropy while optimally controlling exchange coupling strength between top and bottom magnetic layers. In addition, some changes were made to process technology so that existing production equipment for conventional perpendicular magnetic recording media can be used for ECC media.

The ECC media that is scheduled to be mass-produced beginning from September 2008 has much higher magnetic anisotropy by changing materials for bottom magnetic layer and finer crystal grains for recording layer. In this way, recording density is increased with good thermal stability.

• 2.5”/160GB glass media started to be shipped in July 2008
• 3.5”/334GB aluminum media started to be shipped in July 2008
• 2.5”/250GB glass media is scheduled to be mass-produced beginning from September 2008
• 3.5”/500GB aluminum media is scheduled to be mass-produced beginning from December 2008

Consequently, ECC media is expected to account for 40% of our total number of media shipments for fiscal 2008, which was expected to be 10% in our original plan.

Reference:

Figure1.	Comparison between Conventional Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Media and FDT’s ECC Media
Figure2.	Layer Structure of FDT’s ECC Media
Figure3.	Mass-production Roadmap of New Products
Figure4.	Trend of Hard Disk Recording Density

Conventional Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Media FDＴ’s ECC Media Figure1. Comparison between Conventional Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Media and FDT’s ECC Media

Figure2. Layer Structure of FDT’s ECC Media

Figure3. Mass-Manufacturing Roadmap of New Products

Figure4. Progress of Hard Disk Recording Density