Patent ID: 8034470

Claim:
A perpendicular magnetic recording medium, comprising at least a nonmagnetic underlayer, a magnetic recording layer, and a protective layer formed in this order on a nonmagnetic substrate, wherein the magnetic recording layer comprises a low Ku layer having a a Ku value≦3.3×10 5 , and a high Ku layer in which the Ku value is relatively large, and the low Ku layer comprises a soft magnetic thin film in which nitrogen is added to a ferromagnetic material comprising Co, Cr, and Pt and a nonmagnetic oxide, the thin film having a crystal structure that is face-centered cubic lattice or hexagonal close packed lattice, with crystal orientation plane parallel to a plane of the thin film being a (111) plane in the case of a face-centered cubic lattice and a (002) plane in the case of a hexagonal close packed lattice.