A Thin Film Head for Perpendicular Magnetic Recording

The effects of main pole thickness and depth on performance of a thin-film head, adopting an amorphous Co-Zr film as the main pole, are reported. Heads with main pole thicknesses Tm of 0.2, 0.3, and 0.5 ¿m, and depths Dp of 2, 5, 10, and 15 ¿m, were constructed, and mounted on flying sliders. Recording and playback were performed using Co-Cr disk media, and it was found that the write/read characteristic depended only slightly on the main pole depth Dp. A head with main pole thickness 0.2 ¿m was capable of high density recording, with a D50 value of 70 kFRPI.