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US 5,331,493 AGranted
Bidirectional thin-film magnetoresistive tape head assembly
AssigneeMinnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company
InventorTheodore A. Schwarz
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A bidirectional thin-film magnetoresistive tape head assembly. The invention minimizes wear on the head assembly by: (1) minimizing the distance between the read elements and their respective write elements, (2) forming the head assembly from hard materials, and (3) placing a hard block between the read and write elements. The head assembly uses only a single pair of read and write elements per data track, but the pairs are reversed with respect to each other so that the head assembly is capable of reading-while-writing on the tape in both directions.
Claims9
A thin-film magnetoresistive tape head including:
- a read module comprised of a first stack of layers, including, in order, a substrate, a first thin insulating layer, a magnetoresistive (MR) sensing layer, at least one conducting layer, a second thin insulating layer, a shield layer, and a thick insulating layer;
- a write module comprised of a second stack of layers, including, in order, a substrate, a first thin insulating layer, a conducting layer, a second thin insulating layer, a pole layer, and a thick insulating layer;
- and
- a bonding layer interposed between the thick insulating layer of the read module and the thick insulating layer of the write module whereby the read and write modules are aligned along a direction of travel of a magnetic tape past the tape head and wherein the read and write modules are bonded to each other.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.