The effect of track width and topography on composition uniformity of electroplated Permalloy in thin film heads

Author

Sahami, Saeed ; Lee, H. P Edward

Author_Institution

IBM Corp., San Jose, CA, USA

Volume

28

Issue

5

fYear

1992

fDate

9/1/1992 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

2103

Lastpage

2105

Abstract

The composition difference of the plated Permalloy in thin-film heads from pole tip to yoke was studied as a function of the track width and topography. The variation of the track width ranged from 5 to 26 μm and that of the topographical height ranged from 0 to 20 μm. Results show that there was no composition difference for flat structures. However, as the topographical height increased from 0 to 20 μm, the composition difference between the yoke and pole tip changed from 0 to 0.5%. In all cases, it was found that higher topographical areas are Fe-rich. This difference was explained by the diffusion mechanism as opposed to a current crowding model. It was concluded that electroplating can be used to deposit Permalloy in track widths as narrow as 5 μm without substantial degradation in composition uniformity

Keywords

Permalloy; electron probe analysis; electroplated coatings; magnetic heads; magnetic thin film devices; surface topography; EPMA; composition uniformity; diffusion mechanism; electroplated Permalloy; pole tip; thin film heads; topography; track width; yoke; Current density; Degradation; Magnetic heads; Poles and zeros; Proximity effect; Resists; Sputtering; Surfaces; Transistors; Wavelength measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/20.179410

Filename

179410