The introduction of the soft magnetic underlayer (SUL) in perpendicular recording technology is to further increase the recording areal density. However, problems such as growth of the uncontrollable recording layer and additional media noise contributed from the SUL could be resulted. In this work, a synthetic antiferromagnetically (SAF) coupled (002) oriented Fe65Co35 film as an SUL was developed for L1(0) ordered FePt based double-layered recording media. The crystallography of hetero-epitaxially grown double-layered media CrRu/(Ru/FeCo)(2)/Pt/FePt/Ru was demonstrated. The L1(0) ordered FePt based double-layered perpendicular recording media with SAF coupled FeCo films as the SUL were developed. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.