A HIGH-TEMPERATURE STABLE SPIN-VALVE SENSOR HEAD FOR HIGH-DENSITY APPLICATIONS

In this paper, we will report a read-only spin valve that has a trackw idth of 1.4 mu m, a read gap of 0.23 Gun, and with a stripe height of 0.75 mu m. It had a corrosion resistant exchange pinning layer, Co90Fe 10/FeMnRh, that provided an exchange bias of 225 Oe. It produces a ver y stable signal and a normalized amplitude of 1 mv/mu m/(memu/cm(2)). Furthermore its asymmetry is lower that 6%. The Delta R/R of the spin valve film was 5.2% with the following m)/Co90Fe10(1.2nm)/NiFe(2nm)/Fe MnRh(10nm)/Ta(5nm). The spin valve heads were soaked for 96 hours in a corrosion test chamber that was operated at a temperature of 85 C and a humidity of 85%. The sensor element, the exchange bias film the har d magnetic longitudinal bias, and the conducting leads were free from corrosion after the corrosion test. Furthermore the spin valve read-on ly heads were electro-migration tested in an oven operated at 120 degr ees C, and the heads survived with the operating current up to 9 ma.