Thermally-Degraded and Electromigration-Induced Failures in Spin-valve Heads

摘要

As the areal-density of hard disk drives continues to increase,the dimensions of GMR spin-valve read heads have been scaled down to sub-micrometers.The spin-valve heads must operate under a bias current (I_b,) to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio.Reduction of track-width and strip-height leads to high current density in a GMR sensor,and consequently results in high sensor temperature (T_s) due to Joule heating.