A narrow-gap read head with a high-resistance magnetic film was investigated. The film has a resistance of more than 10 m Ω cm and good soft magnetic properties. The high-resistance shield head comprises a GMR film, insulator films for the read-gap, high-resistance magnetic films, insulator films to prevent breakdown of the head, and magnetic shield films. The fabricated high-resistance shield head shows a good output waveform. However, it has a slightly larger half-amplitude pulse width (PW50) value than a conventional shield head, because the permeability of the high-resistance magnetic film is insufficiently high. We concluded that a read head using a high-resistance shield with high permeability would be a suitable candidate for a narrow-gap read head.
