ANISOTROPY CONTROL IN FABRICATION PROCESS FOR NIMN SPIN-VALVE DUAL ELEMENT HEADS

NiMn antiferromagnets with a high blocking temperature are attractive for application to the pinning layer in spin-valve heads, because a hi ghly stable exchange coupling field is expected through their use. We have fabricated NiMn spin-valve heads having a CoZrTa bottom shield an d a CoZrTa/NiFe write element, using an anisotropy control process whi ch provides a,desirable magnetization configuration in each magnetic l ayer. These heads showed highly stable, symmetrical, and Barkhausen no ise free readback waveforms with output voltage of over 800 mu V-pp/mu m.