Sub-100 nm trackwidth development by e-beam lithography for advanced magnetic recording heads

Although semiconductor industry ramps the products with 90 nm much quicker than anticipated [1], magnetic recording head manufacturers still have difficulties in producing sub-100 nm read/write trackwidth. Patterning for high-aspect-ratio writer requires much higher depth of focus (DOF) than most advanced optical lithography, including immersion technique developed recently [2]. Self-aligning reader with its stabilized bias requires a bi-layer lift-off structure where the underlayer is narrower than the top image layer. As the reader's trackwidth is below 100nm, the underlayer becomes very difficult to control. Among available approaches, e-beam lithography remains the most promising one to overcome the challenge of progressive miniaturization. In this communication, the authors discussed several approaches using e-beam lithography to achieve sub- 100 nm read/write trackwidth. Our studies indicated the suspended resist bridge design can not only widen the process window for lift-off process but also makes 65 nm trackwidth feasible to manufacture. Necked dog-bone structure seems to be the best design in this application due to less proximity effects from adjacent structures and minimum blockages for ion beam etching. The trackwidth smaller than 65 nm can be fabricated via the combination of e-beam lithography with auxiliary slimming and/or trimming. However, deposit overspray through undercut becomes dominated in such a small dimension. To minimize the overspray, the effects of underlayer thickness need to be further studied.