Committee 144 Magnetic Recording
The Eighth Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference (PMRC 2007) was held from October 14 to 16, 2007 at Tokyo International Forum located in the heart of downtown Tokyo. The total number of participants was 321, including 227 Japanese. The 94 participants overseas were from the USA, UK, Taiwan, the Netherlands, South Korea, China, and Singapore. The conference was sponsored by the Committee 144 od the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. The number of presented papers was 121, including special commemorative lectures by Professor Iwasaki and Dr. Syoyama, and 32 invited talks.
The conference was aimed at fostering international discussions about perpendicular magnetic recording technology that was originally proposed in Japan. PMRC 2007 was the eighth conference since the first PMRC in 1989. Perpendicular magnetic recording was commercialized in 2005, and widely used worldwide thereafter. PMRC 2007 was the first conference after the commercialization; and was therefore commemorative in this sense.
The areal recording density in magnetic disks is continuously growing at a rapid rate of 60 - 100 % per year. As a result, today's target density is extremely high, such as 1 Tbits/inch2, in which one bit occupies an area of only 25.4 nm by 25.4 nm. Perpendicular magnetic recording is the key strategy to overcome the many difficulties faced at this high density. The conference was concentrated on discussions of next generation perpendicular recording in order to maintain the progress of hard disk technology and its industrial prosperity. Many cutting edge technologies were presented and discussed in the 18 technical sessions with oral and poster presentations.
The selected papers from the presentations are under review by a panel of international experts. They are scheduled to be published and distributed as a special issue of the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials in the third quarter of 2008.