AVS 52nd International Symposium
    Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Thursday Sessions
       Session MI+MS+NS-ThM

Invited Paper MI+MS+NS-ThM5
Ultra Narrow Magnetic Recording Heads: Processing Challenges

Thursday, November 3, 2005, 9:40 am, Room 204

Session: Advanced Magnetic Storage and Manufacturing Processes
Presenter: M.-C. Cyrille, HITACHI Global Storage Technologies - San Jose Research Center
Correspondent: Click to Email
As the areal density of magnetic recording increases well beyond 100Gb/in2, the critical dimensions of recording heads continue to shrink at a rate of 30% per year.@footnote 1@ Today, thin film heads with 100nm or less critical dimensions are being routinely fabricated in manufacturing. By the end of 2006, the physical trackwidht of read head sensors is expected to be less than 60nm. The industry is turning to Direct write E-beam and DUV 193nm as the lithography tools of choice to meet those small dimensions. As the material set used to fabricate thin film magnetic heads is unique to this technology, specific challenges arise when trying to pattern such small devices without loss of performances. Damage due to standard patterning techniques can be now be observed on both the reader and the writer as their dimensions become smaller than 100nm and advances in tooling and processes tailored to each kind of magnetic sensor are required to overcome this issue. @FootnoteText@@footnote 1@ Fontana R.E., MacDonald S.A., Santini H, Tsang C., IEEE Trans. Mag 35, 806 (1999)