Thermal Transient Response of Electrical Self Heating in Current-in-Plane Magnetoresistive Heads

This paper presents an electrothermal model using dynamic resistance thermometry to determine the temperature rise of a current-in-plane GMR sensor in response to imperfect electrical bias (i.e., a DC bias with transients). Measurement and simulation results are given for two different GMR heads (width 500 and 150 nm, respectively). The smaller of the heads is shown to have a virtual instantaneous thermal response (0.2 ns) to transients. Such transients in the bias can, therefore, endanger the read stability and expected lifetime for today's small heads. It is also shown that the peak in the sensor temperature rise is much larger than the sum of the temperature rise due to the bias current and due to the transient current determined separately