Particle Orientation Effects of Barium Ferrite Particulate Media

The effects of particle orientation on the performance of barium ferrite particulate media were investigated by both simulation and experiment. Orientation to either the longitudinal or the perpendicular direction improved performance compared to unoriented media. The experiment showed that small increase of the squareness ratio of the perpendicular direction from 0.69 to 0.84 boosted the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by 1.5 dB at the linear recording density at 600 kbpi. Experimental results agreed well with the results of simulation. The simulation indicated that higher orientation to either direction produces an estimated achievable increase of SNR that was greater by 4 to 5 dB than that of randomly oriented media. This improvement seems to be due to the decrease of particles which oriented to cross track direction.