The latest generation of magnetic hard drives is made
of magnetic thin films, which are invar materials. They allow
extremely robust and high data storage density by local heating of
ultrasmall nano-domains with a laser—so called heat assisted
magnetic recording, or HAMR. The volume in such invar materials
hardly expands despite heating. A technologically relevant material
for such HAMR data memories are thin films of iron-platinum
nanograins. An international team led by the joint research group
of Prof. Dr. Matias Bargheer at HZB and the University of Potsdam
has now observed experimentally for the first time how a special
spin-lattice interaction in these iron-platinum thin films cancels
out the thermal expansion of the crystal lattice.
