Thin film texturing of magnetic recording media is necessary for good stiction characteristics. This paper investigates the effect of a thin film texture on the medium noise.Thin film textured samples, Tex E (Ra=6.8 nm) and Tex J(Ra= 16.1 nm), and a non-textured sample, non-Tex (Ra= 1.1nm), were fabricated by sputtering. The medium noise of Tex E was nearly equal to that of non Tex, but the noise of Tex J was much higher than that of Tex E at 50 kFCI. The magnetic domains in the transition region were observed by using MFM. The resulting MFM image of Tex J shows that there were more irregular magnetic domains in the region than in non Tex and Tex E. This irregularity caused the large medium noise in Tex J. TEM images show that the magnetic layers on the micro-bumps are physically separated from each other. Therefore, the magnetic clusters correspond to the micro-bumps. Tex J has big magnetic clusters, while Tex E has smaller ones.
