Spin-valve head with corrosion resistance for tape recording system

This paper reports on a corrosion-resistant spin-valve head (Ta/NiFe/CoNiFe/CuAu/CoNiFe/PtMn/Ta) for a tape recording system. The spin-valve film has a +0.4 V higher electrochemical potential than the conventional spin-valve film (Ta/NiFe/CoFe/Cu/CoFe/PtMn/Ta). The spin-valve head with CoNiFe magnetic layer and CuAu spacer exhibits good corrosion resistance. An investigation of the recording characteristics of the corrosion-resistant spin-valve head with metal evaporated (ME) tapes showed that: 1) the spin-valve head had about 64% of the output voltage of an isolated pulse of the conventional spin-valve head; 2) the carrier-to-media noise (C/N/sub media/) ratio at a wavelength of 0.4 /spl mu/m of the spin-valve head is the same as that of the conventional spin-valve head; and 3) the C/N/sub media/ ratio of thin ME tape with magnetic layer 33 nm thick was maximized at around M/sub r/t=10 mA, where M/sub r/ is the remanent magnetization and t is the magnetic layer thickness. These results indicate that the corrosion-resistant spin-valve head (Ta/NiFe/CoNiFe/CuAu/CoNiFe/PtMn/Ta) for a tape recording system provides high recording density.