Seagate Technology Incorporated

Dongsung Hong

YongJun Zhao

Lijuan Zou

Mark Ostrowski

Jie Gong

Ibro Tabakovic

Venkatram Venkatasamy

Hui Brickner

Lien Lee

Daniel Sullivan

Anusha Natarajarathinam

Andrew D Habermas

Lily Horng Youtt

A method involves depositing a near-field transducer on a substrate of a slider. The near-field transducer comprises a plate-like enlarged portion and a peg portion. A first hard stop extending from the near field transducer and an air bearing surface is formed. A heat sink is formed on the enlarged portion and the first hard stop. A dielectric material is deposited over the near-field transducer and the heat sink. A second hard stop is deposited on the dielectric material away from the air bearing surface. The second hard stop comprises a recess corresponding in size and location to the heat sink. The method involves milling at an oblique angle to the substrate between the first hard stop and second hard stop to cut through the heat sink at the angle. The recess of the second hard stop increases a milling rate over the heat sink compared to a second milling rate of the dielectric away from the heat sink.

Recessed hardmask used to form heat-assisted magnetic recording near-field transducer with heat sink

Methods of forming near field transducers (NFTs) including electrodepositing a plasmonic material.

Near field transducers including electrodeposited plasmonic materials and methods of forming

Recessed hardmask used to form HAMR NFT heat sink

When opaque films are deposited on semi-conductor wafers, underlying alignment marks may be concealed. The re-exposure of such alignment marks is one source of resulting surface topography. In accordance with one implementation, alignment marks embedded in a wafer may be exposed by removing material from one or more layers and by replacing such material with a transparent material. In accordance with another implementation, the amount of material removed in an alignment mark recovery process may be mitigated by selectively ashing or etching above a stop layer.

Alignment mark recovery with reduced topography

The disclosed methods enable the production of plasmonic near-field transducers that are useful in heat-assisted magnetic recording. The plasmonic near-field transducers have an enlarged region and a peg region. The peg region includes a peg region in proximity to an air-bearing surface above a recording medium and also includes a flared region between and in contact with the enlarged region and the peg region. The flared region can act as a heat sink and can lower the thermal resistance of the peg portion of the near-field transducer, thus reducing its temperature.

Methods of making a near field transducer with a flare peg

Nanoimprint lithography can be used in a variety of ways to improve resolution, pattern fidelity and symmetry of microelectronic structures for thin film head manufacturing. For example, write poles, readers, and near-field transducers can be manufactured with tighter tolerances that improve the performance of the microelectronic structures. Further, entire bars of thin film heads can be manufactured simultaneously using nanoimprint lithography, which reduces or eliminated alignment errors between neighboring thin film heads in a bar of thin film heads.

Nanoimprint lithography for thin film heads

Growing community of inventors

Edina, MN, United States of America

Dongsung Hong