Patent ID: 7972523

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a magnetic recording medium comprising: forming a magnetic recording layer, an antioxidant layer with a thickness of 2 to 15 nm, and a hard mask layer comprising carbon as a main component on a substrate; coating the hard mask layer with a resist; transferring patterns of protrusions and recesses to the resist by imprinting in order to form resist patterns; subsequently etching the hard mask layer using the resist patterns as masks, etching the antioxidant layer, and etching and demagnetizing the magnetic recording layer in order to form patterns of the magnetic recording layer, and subsequently stripping the resist patterns, stripping the hard mask layer by etching with Oxygen (O 2 ) gas, and stripping a portion or all of the antioxidant layer by Argon (Ar) ion milling, wherein the antioxidant layer has an etching rate by the Argon (Ar) ion milling that is higher than an etching rate of the magnetic recording by the Argon ion milling.