Degradation of spin valve heads under accelerated stress conditions

Author

Tsu, I-Fei ; Burg, Greg A. ; Wood, William P.

Author_Institution

Seagate Technol., Minneapolis, MN, USA

Volume

37

Issue

4

fYear

2001

fDate

7/1/2001 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1707

Lastpage

1709

Abstract

The failure mode of spin valve head was studied at various oven temperature and applied current density conditions. The effects on device reliability due to Joule-heat temperature rise, current density, and stress current polarity were investigated by in-situ quasistatic transfer curve measurements. Arrhenius plots of the time to failure (TTF) data show similar activation energy of ~1 eV for failure criteria of 0.2% resistance decrease and 10% amplitude loss. The device reliability is shown to depend predominantly on the peak sensor temperature. The magnetic field produced by the bias current affects primarily magnetic instability and causes mainly the scattering of life test results

Keywords

failure analysis; life testing; magnetic heads; reliability; spin valves; Arrhenius plot; GMR sensor; Joule heat temperature rise; accelerated stress; activation energy; current density; electrical reliability; in-situ quasi-static transfer curve measurement; life testing; magnetic field; magnetic instability; oven temperature; spin valve head; stress current polarity; time-to-failure; Acceleration; Current density; Degradation; Density measurement; Magnetic field measurement; Magnetic heads; Ovens; Spin valves; Stress; Temperature sensors;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/20.950944

Filename

950944