OFF-TRACK RESPONSE VERSUS SHIELD WIDTH AT THE ABS FOR MR HEADS

The shield width of an MR head is an important factor in the off-track performance of the head. The shields reduce the off-track magnetoresi stive pickup of the MR element, however, the inductive response of the shields is a source of off-track coherent noise which can be detrimen tal to disk drive performance. In this study, the off-track magnetores istive response is modeled for heads with varying shield widths at the ABS. Using Focused-Ion-Beam processing, heads of varying shield width s were fabricated and compared to the model. The minimum shield width was determined to be six gap lengths wider than the MR element.