Patent ID: 7623323

Claim:
A magnetoresistive head comprising: a substrate; a lower magnetic shield film and an upper magnetic shield film, both disposed at the top of said substrate; a stacked-type pinned layer and free layers, each disposed between said lower magnetic shield film and said upper magnetic shield film; a nonmagnetic spacer layer disposed between said stacked-type pinned layer and said free layers; magnetic domain control films disposed at both ends of each of said free layers; and electrode films each arranged at the top of each of said magnetic domain control films; wherein: said stacked-type pinned layer includes only three ferromagnetic films, and antiferromagnetic coupling films each disposed between any two of said ferromagnetic films; and of said ferromagnetic films, one ferromagnetic film adjacent to said nonmagnetic spacer layer has highly magnetoresistive characteristics with a Fe composition of 20 at % or less, and both of the other ferromagnetic films each have a coercivity and a resistivity higher than a coercivity and a resistivity of said highly magnetoresistive ferromagnetic film; wherein said stacked-type pinned layer does not have an adjacent exchange-coupling layer.