This award provides funds to a consortium of universities to do collaborative research on the topic of magnetic data storage and recording. The proposal expands and builds upon the research of the current collaborative industry-university efforts in data storage at the Data Storage Systems Center (DSSC), which is an Engineering Research Center at the Carnegie Mellon University. The objective of the research is to investigate the scientific and engineering bases underlying technical barriers to extremely high magnetic data storage density, and potential solutions to these barriers. Major thrust areas include longitudinal magnetic recording on continuous film media, perpendicular magnetic recording with both continuous and self-structured magnetic media, and application of processing techniques currently used by the semiconductor industry to thin film magnetic materials to produce individual nanometer-scale single magnetic domains for high density storage. The academic disciplines involved in this research include extremely thin film magnetic materials science and engineering, magnetic device physics, modeling, design and processing of nanometer scale descrete magnetic devices, materials science, tribology, and micromechanics of magnetic surfaces, fluid mechanics of air beqarings, microelectromechanical devices, and signal processing.
The research is being coordinated by the Director of the DSSC. The National Storage Industry Consortium provides cost matching to the various universities in the consortium in direct relationship on a pro rata basis.
