Patent ID: 6983530

Claim:
A method of making a magnetic head assembly that includes a write head and a read head comprising: making the write head as follows; forming first and second pole piece layers with each of the first and second pole piece layers having a yoke portion located between the pole tip portion and a back gap portion; forming a nonmagnetic write gap layer between the pole tip portions of the first and second pole piece layers; forming an insulation stack with at leas one coil layer embedded therein between the yoke portions of the first and second pole piece layers; and connecting the first and second pole piece layers at their back gaps portions; and making the read head as follows: forming a spin valve sensor between nonmagnetic nonconductive first and second read gap layers; and forming the first and second read gap layers between a ferromagnetic first shield layer and the first pole piece layer; and making the spin valve sensor as follows: forming nonmagnetic conductive first and second spacer layers; forming a ferromagnetic free layer structure between the first and second spacer layers that have a magnetic moment; forming an antiferromagnetic pinning layer; forming a pinned layer structure between the first spacer layer and the pinning layer with a magnetic moment pinned by the pinning layer; forming a nonmagnetic conductive specular reflector layer structure; and forming a self-pinned layer between the second spacer layer and the specular reflector layer structure having a magnetic moment that can be pinned by sense current fields parallel to the magnetic moment of the pinned layer structure.