International Business Machines Corporation

Jeffrey Merritt McKay

Andrew Ching Tam

Henry S Nishihira

A disk drive assembly in which the suspension, slider and transducer are integrated and fabricated to produce a combination assembly. The combination transducer-slider-suspension assembly is batch produced by forming a plurality of the combination assemblies onto a single wafer. The wafer is then diced to separate the assemblies into individual sections. The transducers are deposited onto the wafer and the air bearing surface formed. Conductors to interconnect each transducer with the external circuits are insulated from the wafer and deposited along a path which will form the suspension. A spring-like resilient layer is then deposited over and electrically insulated from the conductors. The wafer is then pattern etched to remove a portion of the wafer backside to form the suspension and provide a transducer/slider combination having an air bearing surface after the wafer is diced to separate the individual combination assemblies. The air bearing surface is defined as the slider surface immediately adjacent the media surface during read/write operation of the disk drive assembly whether or not the slider is flying above or in sliding contact with the media surface during operation. Integrated circuit amplifiers can be deposited at the free end of the conductors prior to separation of individual assemblies.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Jeffrey Merritt McKay