Magnetostriction constant of a magnetic thin film is conventionally measured by detecting the deformation of a coupon sample that consists of the magnetic film deposited on a thin glass substrate (e.g., cover glass of size 10 mm × 25 mm) under an applied field using a laser beam [A. C. Tam and H. Schroeder, J. Appl. Phys. 64, 5422 (1988)]. This method, however, cannot be applied to films deposited on actual large-size substrates (wafers) with diameter from 3 to 6 in. or more. In a previous paper [Okita et al., J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 200, 112008 (2010)], the authors presented a method for measuring magnetostriction of a magnetic thin film deposited on an actual substrate by detecting the change of magnetic anisotropy field, Hk, under mechanical bending of the substrate. It was validated that the method is very effective for measuring the magnetostriction constant of a free layer on the actual substrate. However, since a Ni-Fe shield layer usually covers a magnetic head used for a hard disk drive, this shield layer disturbs the effective measurement of R-H curve under minor loop. Therefore, a high magnetic field that can saturate the magnetic material in the shield layer should be applied to the head in order to measure the magnetostriction constant of a pinned layer under the shield layer. In this paper, this method was applied to the measurement of the magnetostriction constant of a pinned layer under the shield layer by using a high magnetic field up to 320 kA/m (4 kOe).

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