THERMAL AND ELECTRICAL RELIABILITY OF DUAL-STRIPE MR HEADS

Dual-Stripe Magnetoresistive heads are subjected to accelerated life t ests through elevated temperature and excess current. The time to fail ure is well described by the Arrhenius model, yielding an activation e nergy of 1.99+/-0.11 eV. Extrapolation of the time to failure (TTF) of the total head population to nominal operating conditions yields a me an TTF (MTTF) well in excess of the 1 Mhr called for in high performan ce applications. Based on these measurements, calculated annual failur e rates (AFR) in the ppm/year range are expected over a nominal field service period of 10(5) hours (11 years).