Greater than 14 Gb/in(2) spin valve heads

We have designed and fabricated dual spin valve heads with synthetically pi nned layers. They have excellent sensitivity. The read-back waveform has a small asymmetry and that is also insensitive to the bias current. The read gap length is of 0.14 mu m and the write gap length is of 0.2 mu m. The rea d heads have a nominal magnetic trackwidth of 0.5 mu m and a nominal write magnetic trackwidth of 0.8 mu m. The write heads were conventional inductiv e heads with their pole geometry defined by focused ion beam (FIB) technolo gy. The dual spin valve heads have achieved an areal read/write density as high as 14.5 Gb/in(2) at a data transfer rate of 23 similar to 24 MB/sec Th e sensitivity of the readers is as high as 3.6 mVp-p/mu m. The bit aspect r atio is as high as 14.