Spin-valve read heads with NiFe/Co/sub 90/Fe/sub 10/ layers for 5 Gbit/in/sup 2/ density recording

Successful use of a NiFe/Co/sub 90/Fe/sub 10/ bilayer as a soft magnetic free layer in spin-valve films with a GMR enhanced structure comprised of NiFe/Co/sub 90/Fe/sub 10//Cu/Co/sub 90/Fe/sub 10//FeMn is outlined. The GMR ratio of the spin-valve film with Co/sub 90/Fe/sub 10/ is over 7% and the coercivity of the free NiFe/Co/sub 90/Fe/sub 10/ bilayers is less than 5 Oe. A merged inductive/spin-valve head was fabricated with a read track-width of 1.3 /spl mu/m and a read gap-length of 0.26 /spl mu/m using spin-valve film with a Ta(50 /spl Aring/)/NiFe(45 /spl Aring/)/Co/sub 90/Fe/sub 10/(30 /spl Aring/)/Cu(32 /spl Aring/)/Fe/sub 10/(22 /spl Aring/)/FeMn(100 /spl Aring/)/Ta(100 /spl Aring/) structure and 260 /spl Aring/ thick domain control Co/sub 78/Cr/sub 10/Pt/sub 12/ magnet layers. Its read/write performance was tested on a low noise CoCr/sub 17/Pt/sub 5/Ta/sub 4/ thin film disk with an Mr/spl middot/t of 0.41 memu/cm/sup 2/ and a coercivity of 2500 Oe. There is no Barkhausen noise in the readback waveform. The result of the microtrack sensitivity profiles reveals an effective read track-width of 0.8 /spl mu/m. A normalized output for a track-width of 880 /spl mu/Vpp//spl mu/m and D/sub 50/ of 166 kFCI was obtained. Using a PRML channel, a bit error rate of less than 10/sup -8/ was obtained without error correction at a data rate of 3.3 MB/s and at a linear density of 217 kBPI on a thin film disk with an Mr/spl middot/t of 0.72 memu/cm/sup 2/. Thus, 5 Gbit/in/sup 2/ density recording with a linear density of 217 kBPI and a track density of 23 kTPI is possible.