The nanomagnetics encompasses materials, devices, and biological systems that have their functional magnetic building blocks with dimensions on the order of or smaller than the characteristic length, the domain wall thickness, of the constituent magnetic materials. Such single magnetic domain building blocks enable unprecedented functionalities far beyond what is achievable in conventional macroscopic systems.
Prior to joining the University of Houston, Dr. Litvinov led a team of researchers at Seagate Technology to study the recording physics of perpendicular magnetic recording systems and to demonstrate competitive, with respect to longitudinal recording, perpendicular magnetic recording prototypes. His team has developed low noise magnetic soft underlayers, the key component of a perpendicular magnetic recording system, high anisotropy recording multilayers, and recording heads with sub-100nm critical dimensions that were used to demonstrate 400ktpi track density, at least 4 times higher than the state-of-the-art.
While at the University of Houston, Dr. Litvinov have established a rigorous program on advanced magnetic data storage systems based bit-patterned medium magnetic recording, a project that has been funded by National Science Foundation, Texas Advance Technology Program, Office of Naval Research, and Information Storage Industry Consortium grants. The team is applying ion beam proximity lithography with a sub-5nm theoretical resolution limit to define the position and shape of data bits on a magnetic disk. This is drastically different from conventional technologies used in today’s hard drives, where each data bit is represented by a collection of randomly sized and positioned magnetic crystallites that constitute a magnetic recording layer. Elimination of this randomness promises significant increase in achievable bit density. So far, the team has demonstrated feasibility of patterned medium fabrication using ion beam proximity lithography, significantly contributed to the development of design guidelines for patterned medium read/write systems, investigated feasibility of using high anisotropy magnetic multilayers in bit patterned medium recording.
Research Faculty
