Spin-valve heads with self-stabilized free layer by antiferromagnet

We demonstrate the feasibility of a spin-valve read head using an adjacent antiferromagnetic (AFM) layer to provide a stabilization Held, eliminating the hard bias permanent magnet layer. The head stack consists of seed/AFM/CoFe/Ru/CoFe/Cu/CoFe (and/or NiFe)/Cu/IrMn/cap where the AFM is PtMn or IrMn. The abutted junction is about 0.1 /spl mu/m wide at the free layer and no permanent magnet materials are used. Micromagnetic modeling indicates that a proper bias field is needed to have a stable head response. The bias field from the AFM layer can be modified by a nonmagnetic spacer layer between AFM and FM. The coupling field decays exponentially with the thickness of the spacer layer, consistent with a pinhole-dominated mechanism. Unshielded sensors show much higher sensitivity as,compared with a standard PM abutted junction head. Microtrack profile based on the spin-stand test shows a regular shape without apparent lumps. The electrical reader width is about 6 /spl mu/" (0.15 /spl mu/m), corresponding to a track density of 112 ktpi. Combined with a linear density of 591 kbpi the heads in this work are capable of areal density around 66 Gb/in/sup 2/.