3-dimensionals lithography techniques for air bearing surface patterning in hard-disk drive reading/writing head manufacturing

Abstract

The aerodynamic Micro-Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) patterns such as Air Bearing Surface (ABS) in the read/write head of a hard disk drive can be formed by using lithography technique. The important element is the lithography mask set. In one set of masks consists of (1) Binary Intensity Mask with Single Layer Reticle (BIM-SLR), (2) Binary Intensity Mask with Multi Layer Reticle (BIM-MLR), (3) Multi Exposure Binary Intensity Mask with Multi Layer Reticle (ME-BIM-MLR), (4) Gray Scale Lithography mask (GSL-mask) (5) Multi Film Thickness mask (MFT-mask) and (6) Vary Dose MFTmask (VD-MFT-mask). It is found that the most cost and time effective mask type is VD-MFT-mask. As long as the number of lithography masks is less than 5, then the time required to fabricate VD-MFT-mask is still less than the time required to fabricate GSL-mask. Therefore this paper report the application of VD-MFT-mask for patterning ABS in order to reduce cost and process time instead of increasing the number of process tools such that the throughput is increased. This will essentially reduce the total process cost for the future process.