This paper outlines the successful use of NiFe/(Co/sub 90/Fe/sub 10/)/sub 100-x/Bx (x=5, 10%) for soft magnetic, thermally stabilized spin-valves. The GMR effect in the NiFe/CoFeB spinvalve increases after annealing. The annealing effect of CoFeB on CoFeB/Cu interfaces is investigated by high resolution TEM-EDX analysis. Merged inductive NiFe/CoFeB spin-valve heads with a read gap length of 0.18 /spl mu/m and a write gap length of 0.28 /spl mu/m having NiO(400 /spl Aring/)/NiFe(10 /spl Aring/)/CoFeB/sub 5/(10 /spl Aring/)/Cu(32 /spl Aring/)/CoFeB/sub 5/(20 /spl Aring/)/Ta(100 /spl Aring/) spin-valve film and high Bs laminated FeZrN/NiFe top poles were fabricated. Their read/write performance were tested on a low noise CoCr/sub 19/Pt/sub 5/Ta/sub 2/Nb/sub 2/ thin-film disk with an Mrt of 0.6 memu/cm/sup 2/ and a coercivity of 2600 Oe. A normalized output per track-width of 1000 /spl mu/Vpp//spl mu/m and a 50% rolloff linear density (D/sub 50/) of 182 kFCI is obtained. This performance well exceeds the performance of 5 Gbit/in/sup 2/ spin-valve heads. The measured S/N was 26.8 dB for a spin-valve head with with a narrow read track-width of 0.68 /spl mu/m, and the feasibility of 8 G bit/in/sup 2/ recording density is studied using a 1/7 code Narrow Band PRML channel.
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