Growth of giant magnetoresistive spin valves with strong exchange bias field

FeMn based spin valves exhibiting high GMR ratio and high exchange bias field were fabricated by improving the interface roughness as well as the crystallographic texture. A highly oriented (111) NiFe free layer deposited with substrate bias promoted strong (111) textures of Cu and FeMn while maintaining sharp interfaces, resulting in a high exchange bias field, a high blocking temperature, and a high GMR ratio. The correlation between the interlayer coupling energy (J/sub free-pinned/) and the interface sharpness was studied as a function of Cu spacer thickness for spin valves with free and pinned NiFe layers deposited under various bias conditions.