Abstract: A microfabricated wobble motor with a positioning arm attached to the wobble motor rotor acts as a fine positioner with bidirectional movement. The primary application is a rotary actuator for the read/write head in a very small magnetic recording disk drive. An integrated head-arm assembly is attached at one end to the rotor of the wobble motor. The other end of the head-arm assembly has a head carrier that is maintained in contact with the disk. Head position error information is read from the disk and used to provide control signals to each of the stator elements. The stator elements are sequentially addressed by applying a voltage from a driver circuit. This causes the rotor to be electrostatically attracted to the activated stators, so that the rotor is movable bidirectionally. The read/write head can thus be moved bidirectionally to any of the data tracks on the disk and maintained on a desired data track for reading or writing data.

Abstract: A magnetic recording disk drive uses side-by-side read/write heads formed on head carriers that are substantially identical for both top and bottom disk surfaces. Thus, a common head carrier functions as a single manufacturable part usable for both top and bottom disk surfaces. The common head carrier has a trailing end with a pattern of components formed on it that includes three side-by-side transducers and sets of terminal pads. In the read/write/read side-by-side head arrangement, the first element is a center write element, such as an inductive coil, and the second and third elements are read elements, such as magnetoresistive read elements, that are generally equally spaced from the center write element.

Abstract: A disk drive assembly in which the suspension and read/write transducer are integrated into a combination assembly and fabricated using thin film deposition techniques thereby producing an assembly which is very low in mass permitting contact recording. In one embodiment, transducers are deposited in a row and column configuration onto a release and support layer covering a wafer substrate having a thickness equal to a desired suspension length. The wafer is separated into a plurality of row sections, with each row section providing one thin film transducer from each column. A second release layer is formed on a separated side on the row section and thin layers of suitable materials are deposited to form a suspension layer including conductive lines extending to the thin film transducers. The first and second release layers are dissolved and the row section is further cut to form the individual combination assemblies.

Abstract: A contact recording disk file uses an integrated head-suspension assembly having a head carrier with a dual-layer wear pad for contacting the disk during read and write operations. The outer wear layer of the pad is relatively soft and wear prone compared to a harder and more wear-resistant inner layer. The outer wear layer wears away at a relatively rapid rate during initial wear-in of the head carrier. In this manner the head pole pieces, which extend into the wear pad, are rapidly put into contact with the disk, thereby compensating for initial misalignment of the wear pad with the surface of the disk. The inner wear layer then provides wear resistance over the life of the disk file. In the preferred embodiment, both the outer and inner wear layers are formed of essentially amorphous carbon doped with different amounts of hydrogen.

Abstract: A magnetic tunnel junction device for use as a magnetic memory cell or a magnetic field sensor has one fixed ferromagnetic layer and one sensing ferromagnetic layer formed on opposite sides of the insulating tunnel barrier layer, and a hard biasing ferromagnetic layer that is electrically insulated from but yet magnetostatically coupled with the sensing ferromagnetic layer. The magnetic tunnel junction in the device is formed on an electrical lead on a substrate and is made up of a stack of layers. The layers in the stack are an antiferromagnetic layer, a fixed ferromagnetic layer exchange biased with the antfferromagnetic layer so that its magnetic moment cannot rotate in the presence of an applied magnetic field, an insulating tunnel barrier layer in contact with the fixed ferromagnetic layer, and a sensing ferromagnetic layer in contact with the tunnel barrier layer and whose magnetic moment is free to rotate in the presence of an applied magnetic field.

Abstract: A spin valve magnetoresistive (SVMR) sensor uses a laminated antiparallel (AP) pinned layer in combination with an improved antiferromagnetic (AF) exchange biasing layer. The pinned layer comprises two ferromagnetic films separated by a nonmagnetic coupling film such that the magnetizations of the two ferromagnetic films are strongly coupled together antiferromagnetically in an antiparallel orientation. This laminated AP pinned layer is magnetically rigid in the small field excitations required to rotate the SVMR sensor's free layer. When the magnetic moments of the two ferromagnetic layers in this AP pinned layer are nearly the same, the net magnetic moment of the pinned layer is small. However, the exchange field is correspondingly large because it is inversely proportional to the net magnetic moment. The laminated AP pinned layer has its magnetization fixed or pinned by an AF material that is highly corrosion resistant but that has an exchange anisotropy too low to be usable in conventional SVMR sensors.

Abstract: A magnetoresistive (MR) read transducer having passive end regions separated by a central active region in which an MR layer is formed over substantially only the central active region and in which a magnetic bias layers is formed in each passive end region. Each of the magnetic bias layers includes a layer of ferromagnetic material and a layer of antiferromagnetic material overlaying and in contact with the ferromagnetic layer to provide an exchange-coupled magnetic bias field. Each of the magnetic bias layers form an abutting junction having magnetic and electrically continuity with the MR layer to produce a longitudinal magnetic bias field in the transducer.