A front-yoke stacked-type TMR (Tunneling MagnetoResistive) head has an advantage of lower noise with a large size of the TMR element. The head has a symmetrical structure to the element, and produces Lorentzian waveforms without any distortion in combination with perpendicular magnetic recording media. Therefore, a conventional signal processor is applicable to the head. However, there is a crucial issue of crosstalk from adjacent tracks. This paper describes the design and performance of the front-yoke stacked-type TMR head. Three-dimensional magnetic field calculations of some read-out characteristics were carried out, and it was found that an effective method to increase signal output and decrease crosstalk from adjacent tracks.
