The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 27, 1999
Filed:
Oct. 24, 1997
Frederick Hayes Dill, South Salem, NY (US);
Robert Edward Fontana, Jr, San Jose, CA (US);
Stuart Stephen Parkin, San Jose, CA (US);
Ching Hwa Tsang, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) magnetoresistive read head for a magnetic recording system has the MTJ device located between two spaced-apart magnetic shields. The magnetic shields, which allow the head to detect individual magnetic transitions from the magnetic recording medium without interference from neighboring transitions, also function as electrical leads for connection of the head to sense circuitry. Electrically conductive spacer layers are located at the top and bottom of the MTJ device and connect the MTJ device to the shields. The thickness of the spacer layers is selected to optimize the spacing between the shields, which is a parameter that controls the linear resolution of the data that can be read from the magnetic recording medium. To reduce the likelihood of electrical shorting between the shields if the shield-to-shield spacing is too small, each of the shields can have a pedestal region with the MTJ device located between the two pedestals, so that the shield-to-shield spacing outside the pedestal regions is greater than in the pedestal regions.