Exchange-coupled composites and graded magnetocrystalline anisotropy films allow a lower switching field while maintaining a given thermal stability relative to a conventional single thin film. In this letter, [001] oriented single composition, multilayered single compositions, and a linearly graded composition of Fe NiPt thin films were sputter-deposited. The films were patterned into an array of ∼70–80 nm diameter nanodots by electron beam lithography and Ar ion etching. A relative improvement in the switching field-to-thermal stability of ∼41% was achieved for the continuous graded film as compared to the single composition FeNiPt film. However, the patterned diameter size was still too large to prevent lateral magnetic domain wall motion; consequently, the absolute switching field-to-thermal stability value was low.