ESD sensitivity of GMR heads at variable pulse length

Abstract

9 Gb/in/sup 2/ GMR heads were subjected to electrical overstress using square pulses of variable duration. The pulse length was varied between 4 ns and 80 ms. For each pulse length, the magnetic and physical failure thresholds were measured via a quasi-static test. It is found that for long pulses (/spl gsim/1 /spl mu/s) the GMR sensors fail at constant power, whereas at very short times (<100 ns), the system starts to gradually transition to an adiabatic regime where failure occurs at constant energy.