Experimental study of playback giant magnetic resonance head nonlinearity in perpendicular recording

In this article, nonlinear distortions of the playback giant magnetic resonance (GMR) sensor in perpendicular recording are characterized in both time and frequency domains. We use three perpendicular media with different M_rt (0.46, 0.6, and 0.8 emu/cm²) and two groups of similar magnetic-read width (MRW) but different junction type [contiguous junction (CJ) and lead-over-lay (LOL)] GMR heads. Square-wave patterns at moderate densities are recorded to minimize NLTS, partial erasure, and transition broadening effects. Both time- and frequency-domain measurements indicate that the LOL-type GMR heads show playback nonlinearity (7%–23%), while the CJ-type GMR heads do not. Micromagnetic simulation is utilized to understand the hard bias field with different junction designs. The result indicates that the hard bias (HB) field in LOL type (HB field ∼6.9 Oe) at the air bearing surface (ABS) and stripe center is much lower than that in CJ type (HB field ∼54.0 Oe). Therefore, the free layer with large HB–HB distance will be more susceptible to saturation. © 2003 American Institute of Physics.