and 120 a and the hard bias material is a layer of cocrpt of approximately 350 a thickness but which could be of thickness between approximately 200 a to 500 a the shaping of the sides 19 and deposition of the bias layer 20 is done by methods well known in the art such as the dual use of a lift off stencil first as an ibe etching mask and subsequently as a bias layer deposition mask the hard bias layer is then capped by a protective material layer 22 which is a ta layer formed to a thickness of between approximately 100 and 120 angstroms the ta layer will serve as a hard mask to protect the hard bias layer during a subsequent ion beam etching ibe process to form the lead overlay junction the layers comprising the stack 18 are a magnetoresistive property enhancing seed layer 30 formed of nicr or nifecr to a thickness of between approximately 30 a angstroms and 100 a on which is formed a metallic non magnetic bilayer of ru cu 32 formed to a thickness of between approximately 3 a and 15 a on which is formed a ferromagnetic free layer 34 which is a bilayer comprising a layer of nife 36 of thickness between approximately 10 a and 80 a on which.