Frequency response of common lead and shield type magnetic tunneling junction head

Abstract

In this work, the frequency response in magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) heads was studied. Both stray capacitance and junction resistance, forming a low-pass-filter, have to be reduced to improve the cutoff frequency in MTJ heads. By employing an Ar gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) process, junctions grown on the magnetic shield show a resistance area product as low as 3.6 /spl Omega//spl mu/m/sup 2/ and tunneling magneto-resistance over 14%. The dominant capacitance in common lead and shield MTJ heads was found mainly resulting from the shield-to-shield spacing, whose capacitance can be reduced by using an SiO/sub 2/ gap layer instead of Al/sub 2/O/sub 3/ layer and thus leading to an improved frequency response. Simple analysis indicates that a read amplifier design with low impedance could be helpful to realize a high data transfer rate, and a rate of around 800 Mbps for 100 Gbits/in/sup 2/ recording system can be thus expected.