Laminated soft magnetic films separated by nonmagnetic interlayers hav
e edge curling walls (ECW) at the pattern edge. The authors have inves
tigated dynamic magnetization changes near the ECW in strip shaped lam
inated permalloy films. Observation results obtained by scanning Kerr
effect microscope at 10 MHz show the unique magnetization behavior; th
at is inactive (weak Kerr signal) regions at the strip edges and magne
tization change peaks inside the inactive regions. The edge region is
observed as the inactive region under an excitation field smaller than
the switching field in the ECW. According to the magnetization change
calculation, the peak appears, because the magnetization near the ECW
shows a different behavior, depending on the external field direction
. Further examination shows that the ratio of the active region width
in the actual strip width is changed by the layer configuration. In th
e 2 Oe excitation field, these ratios are estimated to be about 0.4 an
d 0.8 for the 50 nm / 20 nm and 25 nm / 10 nm laminated, 3 mu m widest
rips, respectively. This unique magnetization behavior near the strip
edges is important, when designing a narrow track head, because it det
ermines the effective track width.