Sony today announced that by independently developing a soft magnetic underlayer with a smooth interface using sputter deposition, it has succeeded in creating a nano-grained magnetic layer with fine magnetic particles and uniform crystalline orientation. This enabled Sony to successfully develop magnetic tape technology that achieves the world’s highest areal recording density for tape storage media of 148 Gb/in2 (gigabits per square inch). This areal recording density is equivalent to approximately 74 times the capacity of current mainstream coated magnetic tape storage media, and makes it possible to record more than 185 TB (terabytes) of data per data cartridge.
Sony will jointly announce these results with IBM Corporation, who assisted with measuring and assessing the recording density of this new technology, at the INTERMAG Europe 2014 international magnetics conference to be held in Dresden, Germany beginning on May 4.

