Shrinking size effects of CPP-TMR and CPP-GMR heads: failure phenomena caused by electrostatic discharge

Abstract

This work presents the tolerance of CPP-TMR and CPP-GMR heads to ESD events when the sizes of
both reader technologies are shrinking. The shrinking size effect actually indicates the growth of AD targeting
to Tb/in2. Blocking temperature, melting temperature, and electric fi eld breakdown of the oxide layer are the key
parameters for investigation upon the temperature increment of CPP-TMR and CPP-GMR heads caused by an
ESD current. The investigation was carried out by using a fi nite element analysis, solver and simulation software.
The results reveal that at 30% shrinking size, CPP-TMR is 15% less tolerance to ESD phenomena than that of
CPP-GMR technology for the case of hard failure aspect. On the other hand, CPP-GMR is approximately 10%
more sensitive to ESD events than CPP-TMR technology for the case of soft failure aspect.