The influence of domain activities on MR head performance

Abstract

The relation of signal distortion of MR heads to the domain structure and the domain activities was studied in this paper. Several kinds of MR elements were fabricated and a measurement system was set up to measure magnetoresistivity. A large drop near the peak of the output wave form was found for some MR elements. And the magnetic structure of the MR element was investigated by the "Bitter pattern." It was seen that there existed multidomain in the part of the lead without gold coating. Furthermore, it was also found that the multidomain existed in the junction of leads and the MR element, and the new domain looked like a hook. The appearance of this hook-shaped multidomain has not been reported up to now in literature. The design of the MR element was modified to eliminate the drop in the output wave form and the drop was reduced substantially. Our study shows that suitable geometric dimensions and structures of leads are also very important to high performance of MR head in head design in addition to select the optimum biasing conditions. © 1996 American Institute of Physics.