The magnetic recording industry is keeping up with the ultra high demand of high capacity hard drives by improving the areal recording densities of these devices. Such imposing advancement in utilization and performance is due to successive scaling in the geometrical dimensions of the device. This progression has been truncated by the fundamental limit known as the superparamagnetic limit which occurs when bits of digital data are aggressively decreased that ambient heat demagnetizes them, leading to loss of the stored data.

To overcome this problem, the use of large magnetic anisotropy energy density alloys is compulsory, but the write fields that are required by these alloys are prohibitively large, rendering these media effectively unwritable. Fortunately, heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) enables the use of the smallest possible thermally stable grains, irrespective of the ultra-large intrinsic anisotropy. HAMR exploits the substantial drop of coercivity of ferromagnetic material to a level attainable by the magnetic writing head when the disk temperature is elevated close to its Curie level, consequently enhancing the areal density dramatically.

In this thesis, a theoretical and experimental study underlying the design of a heating element based on ultra-high-efficiency near-field optics suitable for extending areal densities beyond 1Tbit/in2 is presented. Near-field apertures are fabricated using focused ion beam milling and characterized via near-field optical microscopy. A breakthrough in the localization of adequate amount of heat into a 30 nm spot size is reported. HAMR demonstration is presented utilizing a customized spinstand tester, and the associated issues are thoroughly addressed.

This dissertation concentrates on the characteristics of graphene, a single layer of graphite, defined as two-dimensional material for carbon based magnetism and electronics. Carbon materials, which are demonstrated by diamond and graphite, have always been of great interest for their unique properties. Moreover, in the last two decades, there have been three revolutionary milestones in the development of carbon materials, which were related to the discovery of fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphene, respectively. Such research evolution led to the realization of the feasibility to tailor magnetic and electronic properties of graphitic sheets.

Magnetism of carbon materials is of particular interest because of its new and relatively unexplored origins. The technological potential of the new materials is enormous as they promise to become the first room-temperature ferromagnetic semiconductors - the Holy Grail of the world of electronics. Not to mention that the existence of the new materials is vital for the emerging field of spintronics. Researchers believe that new carbon-based magnetic materials could greatly extend the limits of current technologies relying on magnetic and semiconducting properties. In this work, the magnetic properties of pristine graphene and chemically modified graphene were mainly investigated. The chemical functionalization with nitrophenyl (NP) groups was performed by covalent attachment of aryl groups to the basal plane of carbon atoms. The functionalized samples were found to be in mixed state of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic states with spins aligned in the main plane at room temperature.

Based on these findings, this work attempted to identify the origins of the intrinsic magnetism and potential ways to tailor magnetism in graphene. Such technology has great potential to pave a way to the next-generation technologies containing high-speed and high-density nonvolatile memory as well as the production of reconfigurable logic devices, integrated magneto-optical devices, quantum information devices, and many devices.

The data storage industry recently substituted its five-decade-old technology (longitudinal magnetic recording), which reached its fundamental limitations due to thermal instabilities in the recording media, with perpendicular magnetic recording. Nonetheless, the lifetime of this newly adopted technology and other next generation alternatives including heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and bit patterned media (BPM) is comparably short. In order to defer the superparamagnetic limit substantially beyond 1 Tbits/in^2, it may be necessary to stack information in a third (vertical) dimension.

This vertical stacking underlies the concept of multilevel (ML) three-dimensional (3D) magnetic recording and memory. In 3D magnetic devices, information is recorded, not only on one surface (as in all modern 2D applications), but in the entire 3D bulk of the recording media. As a result, substantially larger amount of data could be recorded on the same surface area (as compared to any 2D alternative). This study addresses design configuration, media fabrication, and characterization techniques for a particular ML 3D magnetic recording device. A newly developed ML 3D magnetic recording media enables selective reading and writing of up to 4 distinct signal levels, in comparison to only two signals in conventional 2D-based magnetic recording media. It is believed that at least over six layers (or over 2^6 = 64 signal levels) could be independently accessed in a ML 3D magnetic recording device. Gallium ion implantation as a potential method to alter the magnetic properties of 3D media is also discussed.

Furthermore, with every emerging technology, both fabrication systems and characterization techniques must be developed. One of the most crucial characterization tools, which enable the direct visualization of the smallest bit of magnetic information, is Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM). MFM is thus an integral part of the development and characterization of ML 3D magnetic recording devices. Nevertheless, the best lateral resolution conventional state-of-the-art probes can produce under ambient conditions is limited to about ~ 25 nm. In this study, newly developed fabrication techniques for MFM probes are presented. Specifically, plateau probes to enhance the overall capabilities of MFM and high lateral resolution (below 10 nm in ambient conditions) multi-domain MFM probe. The enhancement in MFM capabilities has the potential to facilitate the development of HAMR, BPM, and ML 3D magnetic systems.

In this dissertation thesis, I will discuss the fundamental basic technology necessary for continuing the prosperity status of 21st century electronic devices; Lithography. I will give an overview of the concepts of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and development of direct electron beam lithography (D-EBL) for magnetic bit patterned media (BPM), capable of achieving magnetic recording areal densities above 1 terabit/in2. Furthermore, I will present the peripheral equipment mainly used for developing innovative processes.

One of the main challenges in developing direct electron beam lithography technique for fabricating magnetic bit patterned media, which I was faced with was not only to reduce the minimum feature size below 10 nm but also to ensure an adequately small pitch size of less than 26 nm. The latter is the critical value for the side of a square pattern period (assuming a 1:1 bit-aspect ratio (BAR)) necessary to achieve over 1 terabit/in2 density in hard disk industry. The main concern was to overcome the technical limitations associated with a relatively wide electron beam tail. For instance, according to Gaussian distribution, even a "5-nm" electron beam spot size can have a "tail" of over 50 nm because of beam scattering and secondary effect. Another limitation in the spatial resolution of EBL resulted from the interaction of the electron beam with stray magnetic fields emanating from the transitions in the BPM film under study. Throughout my research I comparatively studied a number of EBL processes, the results from which led me into selecting a lift-off based EBL process on films spin-coated with a hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) negative-tone e-beam resist. Using this process, we successfully transferred large-scale square periodic arrays of nano-"dots" with a sub-13-nm diameter and a sub-26-nm pitch, as required for densities above 1 terabit-per-square-inch, into continuous magnetic films made of exchange-coupled Co/Pd perpendicular multi-layers. Furthermore, I used the same EBL process to transfer ultra-high-density patterns not only in conventional single-layer recording media but also into potentially next-generation 3-D structures consisting of several independent magnetic layers. Meanwhile, I fabricated Magnetic Force Microscopy probes for analyzing magnetic properties of nanometer size patterns. This process requires high sensitivity of the resolution and high coercivity at same time. Finally, I will discuss the results from a special magnetic force microscopy (MFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), focused magneto-optical Kerr Effect (F-MOKE) measurements developed to study the EBL-fabricated ultra-high-density BPM media.

Technological developments in the magnetic disk storage industry have relied heavily on the scalability of magnetic bits to ever smaller dimensions in order to provide an increase in areal data densities. This progress has recently been stifled by the Superparamagnetic limit. The Superparamagnetic limit fundamentally restricts the size to which a magnetic bit can be decreased. This limit results from thermal instability of magnetic bits which result in randomization of the magnetic moments within the magnetic media itself as bit dimensions are decreased.

Presently, the Superparamagnetic limit promises to stifle further progress in the magnetic disk-based data storage industry. Therefore, new avenues for technological development in this sector must be pursued to maintain compliance with moor's law and propel future development in this sector at a pace which will keep the industry vital in the coming decades.

In this thesis, a new methodology is proposed by which the technological developments of the traditional magnetic data storage industry can be utilized and the pitfalls of magnetic storage can be avoided. Herein a disk storage implementation involving photo-reactive protein films consisting of Bacteriorhodopsin is presented for extending aerial densities beyond 10 Tbit/in ^{2. System requirements of a commercial application utilizing this technology are presented in detail. The absorption properties of Bacteriorhodopsin (BR) monolayer films, deposited via Electrostatic Self-Assembly, have been studied for the first time to better understand the underlying read/write processes as applicable to this new technology.}

L10-ordered FePt thin films are a leading candidate for next-generation magnetic recording, such as bit-patterned media (BPM), heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), and multilevel three-dimensional (ML3D) magnetic recording, because of their excellent material properties. Its high magnetocrystalline anisotropy of ~ 10^8 ergs/cm^3 allows for grain sizes less than a few nanometers while maintaining good thermal stability. It also has been demonstrated that L10-FePt can achieve coercivity greater than 10 Tesla. However, achieving the L10-phase requires post-annealing and/or deposition at elevated substrate temperature. In this work, the magnetic and microstructural properties of FePt thin films were investigated and improved for the use in perpendicular magnetic recording. FePt thin films were then fabricated on pre-patterned substrates for the use in BPM, with a heat sink layer for the use in HAMR, and with two magnetic layers for the use in ML3D magnetic recording.