Spin-valves with modified synthetic antiferromagnets exhibiting an enhanced bias point control capability at submicrometer dimensions

Bias point control is of practical importance for operating read sensors for magnetic recording and magnetic random access memory devices. To attain bias point control capability, in particular, at submicrometer cell size, a modified synthetic antiferromagnet-based spin-valve (MSSV) structure was devised. A series of calculations were carried out to investigate the effect of size variation on their MR transfer behaviors. The cell dimension was varied from 10 to 0.05μm. The typical MSSV comprises IrMn (9.0)/CoFe (P1, 1.5)/Ru (0.7)/CoFe (P2, 3.0)/Ru (0.7)/CoFe (P3, 1.5)/Cu (2.8)/CoFe (1.6)/NiFe (3.2) (in nm). As the cell size decreased, the bias point in the MSSV maintained nearly zero regardless of the cell size. The bias point was further tuned by varying the P3 layer thickness. Moreover, the effective exchange field (H_ex.eff) of the MSSV was much larger than that of the conventional SSV. The field sensitivity of the MSSV was very high indicating that the free layer can rotate more sharply.