| 摘要 |
<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a magnetoresistive effect sensor having a free layer with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and requiring no hard bias structure for fixing the magnetization of the free layer and minimizing interactions between the shield and free layers. <P>SOLUTION: Over a lower shield 21, a shield layer 24, a free layer 25, a joining layer 26, a reference layer 27 and an exchange pinning layer 28 are formed in this order. After patterning, a conformal insulating layer 23 is formed. After that, an upper shield 22t is formed over the insulating layer 23 along a side wall 33 of a sensor-stacked object. The upper shield 22t is separated from the free layer 25 by a narrow lead gap. Where PMA is greater than the self-demagnetizing field of the free layer 25, the sensor can be expanded in width to less than 50 nm. Since the effective bias magnetic field does not significantly react to the aspect ratio of the sensor, a TMR structure having a high RA value can be realized with a high-stripe and narrow-width sensor. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2012,JPO&INPIT |
