Magnetic device definition with uniform biasing control

US8318030B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Seagate Technology LLC · US

Inventors

• Xilin Peng · Bloomington, US
• Stacey Christine Wakeham · Bloomington, US
• Yifan Zhang · Woodbury, US
• Zhongyan Wang · San Ramon, US
• Konstantin Nikolaev · Edina, US
• Mark Ostrowski · Lakeville, US
• Yonghua Chen · Bloomington, US
• Juren Ding · Hong Kong, CN

Key dates

• Filing date: Jul 13, 2009
• Grant date: Nov 27, 2012
• Expiry date: Sep 5, 2031

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G11B5/3967
• WIPO field: Audio-visual technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A method of fabricating a magnetic device is described. A mask removing layer is formed on a layered sensing stack and a hard mask layer is formed on the mask removing layer. A first reactive ion etch is performed with a non-oxygen-based chemistry to define the hard mask layer using an imaged layer formed on the hard mask layer as a mask. A second reactive ion etch is performed with an oxygen-based chemistry to define the mask removing stop layer using the defined hard mask layer as a mask. A third reactive ion etch is performed to define the layered sensing stack using the hard mask layer as a mask. The third reactive ion etch includes an etching chemistry that performs at a lower etching rate on the hard mask layer than on the layered sensing stack.