JPH05159239A - Thin-film magnetic head slider and production thereof - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To provide protective patterns on an element surface in order to avert the incoming of high-energy particles at the time of dry etching to the element surface at the time of working the head slider using a dry etching process, such as ion etching or sputter etching. CONSTITUTION:The structure to suppress the incoming of the high-energy particles at the time of working rails by forming the protective patterns 11 near the terminal parts 9 of the element surface and on the element side is adopted at the time of etching the thin-film magnetic head slider by the ion etching method or sputter etching method.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a magnetic head used in a magnetic recording device, and more particularly to a method of manufacturing a slider for a thin film magnetic head which requires precision microfabrication.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, magnetic disk devices have been required to have higher recording density as the amount of information increases. Therefore, in a slider of a thin-film magnetic head that performs recording on a recording medium and reproducing from the recording medium, it is required to reduce the flying height on the surface of the magnetic disk. There is an urgent need for accuracy.

Conventionally, the slider processing of a thin film magnetic head has been mainly carried out by machining, but from the viewpoint of miniaturization and the need for a complicated shape including a curved surface, etc.
There is a limit to the processing accuracy, and the development of a new processing method has been desired. That is, since only a linear shape can be machined, it is impossible to machine a rail shape composed of a combination of curved lines and complicated straight lines in order to stabilize the head flying height and lower the flying height. Recently, the head flying height is targeted to be 0.1 micron or less, and various curved rails are required to achieve this. Also,
In order to stably float the head with a clearance of about 0.1 μm, it is necessary to have accuracy when processing the rail width. Specifically, in the case of a rail width of several hundreds of microns, it is required that the machining dimension has a variation of several microns or less. From this point, the limit of machining has come up. As a method of processing a rail shape that cannot be machined, a method of processing a slider by a sandblast method on a mask or a method of evaporating the surface by scanning a laser has been proposed. With these methods, a free rail shape can be processed, but there is still a dimensional variation of 10 microns or more in terms of processing accuracy of rail width, and it has not reached a practical level.

Therefore, as a method for coping with these problems and accurately processing a free rail shape, a photolithography technique used in a wafer process of semiconductor manufacturing is applied. For example, vacuum, 1988 volume. 38, Number 11, 1077 (Vacuu
m, Vol. 38, No. 11, p. 1007-1009,
1988), the use of an organic polymer material for a dry etching mask is being studied. With the dry processing method using such a photo process, it has become possible to perform distortion-free processing with higher accuracy than mechanical processing.

On the other hand, as these dry etching methods, it is general to accelerate high-energy particles such as argon ions to process slider rails. At this time, not only the rail processed surface but also the side surface is processed. There is a problem that even a certain head or terminal part is scraped at the same time and damaged. Therefore, as a method for solving this problem, for example, in JP-A-60-136025, an etching preventing protective film that can be removed after etching is formed is formed on a portion other than the slider rail processing surface to prevent damage during dry etching. To prevent. However, in such a method, it is necessary to previously form a metal or resin film before dry etching, and there is a possibility that the film may be attached even to a portion which should not be attached when forming these protective films. is there.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned drawbacks of the prior art and to protect the element or the terminal from the arrival of linear high-energy particles in the vicinity of the terminal during the dry etching in the terminal portion forming step during dry etching. By forming a protection pattern for this purpose, damage to the element surface side during slider rail dry etching is eliminated.

[0007]

[Means for Solving the Problem] As a result of investigating the damage mode of the element surface during slider rail processing under high vacuum using ion etching or sputter etching, damage on the element surface side is not processed. We found that the damage is caused by high-energy particles flying from the rail surface side, and the damage occurs on the rail side that is not shaded by the flying particles. In particular, the element itself is shaded against flying particles by the dry etching mask at the time of rail processing, but the terminal portion located on the side surface of the slider etching portion is largely shaved. Therefore, in order to avoid this damage during etching, it is necessary to provide a protective wall near the rail processed surface of the terminal part, which has a film thickness similar to that of the terminal part and which can prevent flying particles. I thought it was effective. However, it is not mass-producible to form such a pattern on each slider at the time of slider processing or to remove it after etching. Therefore, it is considered that the protective wall is formed at the same time when the terminal portion of the slider is formed. Even if the protective wall pattern is not removed even after the dry etching of the slider rail is completed, no problem occurs in the performance of the slider.

[0008]

In the thin film magnetic head slider of the present invention, since the rail processing side of the element surface has the protective pattern, during the dry etching of the slider rail using the ion etching or the sputter etching method, the rail processing side is moved to the element surface side. It is possible to stop the high-energy particles coming to the surface of the device, and to prevent damage to the device surface.

[0009]

EXAMPLES An example of the present invention will be shown below to more specifically describe the present invention.

The slider will be described with reference to the manufacturing process of the slider shown in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1A, an alumina film is formed as the insulating layer 1 on the substrate by sputtering to a thickness of 15 μm. Next, as the lower magnetic body 2, permalloy having a thickness of 1.5 μm was formed (b). After that, 0.5 μm of alumina was sputtered as the gap material 3 (c), and a novolac-based positive resist was formed as the insulating layer 4 thereon (d). Next, as the coil 5, Cu is formed by the sputtering method.
Was formed (e), and a novolac-based positive resist was formed thereon as the insulating layer 6 (f). Permalloy was formed as the upper magnetic body 7 from above (g), and then the terminal portion 9 was formed. At this time, patterning at the time of forming the terminal portion is performed by a photolithography technique using a resist. However, as shown in FIG.
The dry etching protection pattern 11 was simultaneously formed along the terminal portion on the side for rail processing, that is, in the element direction. As a place to be formed, in consideration of the processing shape when the slider rail is processed later, it is preferably located on the element side near the terminal 9. Since the terminals were formed by plating Cu, the film thickness of the terminal portion was the same as the film thickness of the protective pattern, both of which were 50 μm.

At the same time when the thin film magnetic head was formed by the above method, a protective pattern for dry etching was formed at the same time, then cut, and rail processing was performed in a slider rail processing step. First, as shown in FIG. 3A, the slider block cut as described above is set on the jig 12, a dry etching mask having photosensitivity is applied on the surface 13 to be processed, and patterning is performed by a photolithography technique. (B). Using this pattern 15 as a mask, the slider rail portion was processed by argon ion etching (c). At this time, high-energy particles come flying from above the dry etching protection pattern 11 in FIG. 2, but since the flying pattern is linear, it can be stopped by the protection pattern 11 and damage to the terminal portion 9 can be avoided. It was Finally, the dry etching mask 15 was removed and the processing of the head slider was completed (d). As a comparative example, FIG.
In the conventional case where the protective pattern is not formed on the element surface, the state of the element surface after being subjected to argon ion etching is shown as in the case of the first embodiment. When the protective pattern is not formed in this way, the element portion 7 and the lead wire 8 are covered with the protective film 10 in FIG. 1, so that there is no damage, but the terminal portion 9 has high energy coming from above. The particles caused a film slip portion 16 as shown in FIG.

[0012]

The thin film magnetic head slider of the present invention has a protective pattern on the rail processing side on the element surface side, and therefore, during dry etching of the slider rail using the ion etching or the scutter etching method, High-energy particles flying to the element surface side can be stopped, and damage to the element surface can be eliminated.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a process drawing of an element surface forming portion in the slider processing method of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a dry etching protection pattern, an element, a lead wire, and a terminal portion used in the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a process drawing of a slider rail processing portion in the slider processing method of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing damage after dry etching of a slider element surface as a comparative example of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Insulating layer 2 ... Lower magnetic film 3 ... Gap material 4 ... Insulating layer 5 ... Coil 6 ... Insulating layer 7 ... Upper magnetic film 8 ...
Lead wire 9 ... Terminal portion 10 ... Protective film 11 ... Protective pattern for dry etching 12 ... Jig for slider rail processing 13 ... Surface for slider processing 14 ... Mask material for dry etching 15 ... Mask material for dry etching 16 … Terminals damaged after dry etching

 ─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (72) Inventor Kazuo Kazuo, 292 Yoshida-cho, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama-shi, Kanagawa Stock, Ltd., Institute of Industrial Science, Hitachi, Ltd. (72) Akiko Mizushima, 292 Yoshida-cho, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa (72) Inventor Hiroshi Ishizaki 2880, Kozu, Odawara-shi, Kanagawa Hitachi, Ltd. Odawara factory

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A thin film magnetic head slider having an etching protection pattern on a head mounting surface of the slider as protection when etching a slider for a thin film magnetic head by an ion etching method or a sputter etching method. 2. The thin film magnetic head slider according to claim 1, wherein the protection pattern is located on the slider rail side with respect to the position of the head or the terminal portion in the same plane as the head. 3. A step of forming an insulating film on a substrate, a step of forming a lower magnetic body, a gap forming step, an insulating layer forming step, a coil forming step, an insulating layer forming step, an upper magnetic body forming step, a terminal forming. In the method for manufacturing a thin-film magnetic head slider, which comprises a step, a protective film forming step, and a slider rail processing step using an ion etching method or a sputter etching method that follows, a protective pattern for the ion etching or sputter etching is applied to the terminal portion. A method of manufacturing a thin-film magnetic head slider, which is characterized in that it is formed at the same time as the formation of the terminal portion in the forming step.