Enhanced giant magnetoresistance sandwich film

Devices have been patterned from enhanced sandwich material as well as more conventional giant magnetoresistance (GMR) sandwich material. The enhanced GMR sandwich consists of essentially adding a Cu spacer and a synthetic an tiferromagnet layer to either side of a conventional sandwich stack. While devices patterned from simple sandwich material are always high resistance in the zero field bias state and decrease in resistance in an applied field , similar devices fabricated from enhanced sandwich material exhibit more c omplex characteristics. Depending upon the bias current density, the zero f ield biased state may be either low or high resistance for this structure. This effect could be useful for applications such as current or magnetic fi eld sensing. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(00)95008-4 ].