Slanted and Conical Electroplated Structures Created Using Photoresist Deformation

Electroplating structures with a reproducible slanted angle is difficult at the sub-micron scale. One application for this shape is in magnetic write heads, where a tapered magnetic pole near the surface of a magnetic head is desirable for writing magnetic media at higher areal densities. We will discuss a deep UV sensitive photoresist coupled with a shrink process which yields a convex shaped resist structure. Although the process is similar to a SAFIER process used in via hole applications, an altered thickness of the resist produced unexpected results. Furthermore, a metrology process will be presented to correlate resist deformation of a test structure with the reentrant angle at the base of the resist wall.