AVS 47th International Symposium
    Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Friday Sessions
       Session MI-FrM

Paper MI-FrM10
Surface Processing with Gas Cluster Ions to Improve GMR Films

Friday, October 6, 2000, 11:20 am, Room 206

Session: Magnetic Recording: Media and Heads
Presenter: D.B. Fenner, Epion Corporation
Authors: D.B. Fenner, Epion Corporation
J. Hautala, Epion Corporation
L.P. Allen, Epion Corporation
J.A. Greer, Epion Corporation
W.A. Skinner, Epion Corporation
A. Al-Jibouri, Nordiko Limited, England
J.I. Budnick, University of Connecticut
Correspondent: Click to Email
Reduction of roughness and removal of contamination on surfaces of substrates and films for giant magneto-resistance (GMR) will be essential in the development of advanced devices. Tools and methods to accomplish this are limited at present. Gas-cluster ion beam (GCIB) technology shows promise as a dry process that can provide substantial improvement, and can be integrated into GMR-film deposition-and-etch tools. Here we describe recent work developing GCIB techniques and processes for tantalum, alumina, copper, permalloy and other types of GMR-device films relevant to the spin valve, tunneling-MR (TMR) and nano-oxide layer (NOL) technologies. With argon GCIB it is possible to reduce the roughness of tantalum films to well below a nanometer (rms), and the roughness falls exponentially with dose. The exposure to GCIB rapidly reduces the presence of asperities on surfaces and removes other contamination. @FootnoteText@ Supported by NIST-ATP.