An examination of substrate incident solid immersion lens recording

This thesis examines solid immersion lens recording. A solid immersion lens was fabricated and characterized statically. An aplanatic solid immersion lens was fabricated along with the mechanical mounting assembly. The system near field spot was characterized and the limitations of the mounting assembly were examined. The limitations of the mounting assembly represent a problem that will limit the maximum numerical aperture of systems in the future. The solid immersion lens assembly was used to statically record very small domains. The magnetic force microscope was used to readout recorded domains as small as 80 nm.; The substrate incident solid immersion lens was designed and implemented to allow conventional recording media to be utilized.; A few topics of interest about TbFeCo were examined with the substrate incident solid immersion lens spin stand. The time decay of the magnetization under various applied fields was examined to determine the activation volume of this TbFeCo film. The effects of recording frequency and thermal aging were examined on the medium transition jitter. Transition jitter is generally the main source of medium noise in TbFeCo films since the hysteresis loop is square. The effect of thermally induced aging from the read laser was examined and the maximum stable recording density was determined for various read powers.; The diameter of the activation volume of the TbFeCo film was determined to be 7 nm. The standard deviation of the transition jitter was measured to be between 15 and 20 nm, much larger than the expected value of 1 nm. However, the expected value is for the medium alone and does not consider any other sources. The transition jitter was found to increase as the read laser thermally aged the medium and the aging increased as the read power increased. The increased jitter did not degrade the signal-to-noise ratio except for the case of small domains, 125 nm. The signal-to-noise ratio for domains on the order of 125 nm was degraded for a read power of 2 mW. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...