Advanced magnetic force microscopy for high resolution magnetic imaging

Magnetic force microscopy (MFM) is one of the primary imaging tools for studying magnetic nanostructures. The resolution of MFM has been considered as a main issue in characterizing magnetic nanostructures smaller than 30 nm; especially for high density recording media beyond 1 Tbit/in2. In this letter, we investigated three different kinds of MFM tips such as those with a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) derived from a crystallographic texture, antiferromagnetic coupled perpendicular (AFC) tips and tips with no crystallographic textures, resulting in no PMA. Their resolution, as measured using a recording media with written information, was compared with that of commercial MFM tips. The tip in the PMA configuration was found to provide the best resolution among all of them.