Various antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials have been investigated in order to obtain higher thermal stability and reliability of the pinned layer for use in spin valve (SV) giant magnetoresistance (GMR) heads in high density magnetic recording. We have found that AFM Ir{sub}22Mn{sub}78 alloy films exchange coupled to Co{sub}75Fe{sub}25 films showed a large exchange coupling field (H{sub}(ex)) of 1,180 Oe and succeeded in developing GMR/SV, which is suitable for narrow gap head structure[1]. In this paper, the MR properties and exchange coupling in bottom type IrMn based SV films with high thermal stability were investigated.
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