ESD phenomena in GMR heads in the manufacturing process of HDD and GMR heads

It is well known that giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads used for hard disk drives (HDD) are very sensitive to electrostatic discharge (ESD). In this paper, we describe a method of categorizing ESD damage modes from a standpoint of magnetic influences on the heads as observed by quasi-static test (QST) characteristics as well as electromagnetic characteristics like off-track profiles. In addition, we report an example of GMR stack interlayer diffusion which is one type of hard ESD damage. We also present an example of ESD damage that happened in an actual production process and its preventive measures as guidelines.