Double-gap magnetoresistive head having an elongated central write/shield pole completely shielding the magnetoresistive sensor strip in the read gap

Claim 1

In a magnetoresistive head having a read/write surface; a pair of inductive write poles and a soft/magnetic shield forming two gaps at said read/write surface, a first gap between the poles, a second gap between one of said poles and said shield, said write poles magnetically connected in a back gap region, the write pole forming a portion of the second gap comprising a trailing pole, and the other write pole comprising a leading pole; and a magnetoresistive strip having a central sense region mounted in said second gap; the improvement comprising: said leading one of said poles having a length defining a track width L, the magnetoresistive strip being substantially longer than said track width L, a pair of current contacts contacting the lateral ends of said magnetoresistive strip and defining a central sense region therebetween, wherein the central sense region of the magnetoresistive strip has approximately the same length as the leading pole, and the trailing pole having a length at least as long as the strip, the length of the trailing pole thereby being longer than said track width L; whereby the leading and trailing inductive write poles have substantially unequal lengths and a track is written on said read/write surface by magnetic mirroring between the leading and trailing poles, the width of the track defined by the length of the leading pole; and where by the trailing pole completely shields the elongated magnetoresistive strip from the high magnetic fields present between the leading and trailing write poles during write operations.