Inventors:
Xilin Peng - Bloomington MN, US
Stacey C. Wakeham - Bloomington MN, US
Yifan Zhang - Eden Prairie MN, US
Zhongyan Wang - San Ramon CA, US
Konstantin R. Nikolaev - Edina MN, US
Mark Henry Ostrowski - Lakeville MN, US
Yonghua Chen - Edina MN, US
Juren Ding - Eden Prairie MN, US
Assignee:
Seagate Technology LLC - Cupertino CA
International Classification:
B44C 1/22
US Classification:
216 22, 216 67, 216 72, 216 75
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.
