Stress control and slider curvature adjust

Summary form only given. With the increasing data storage density in hard disk drives, the slider flying height keeps reducing and it is believed that a flying height of 5-7nm will be needed for an area density around 200GB/in₂. The curvature control of the slider with ABS pattems is one of the key factors for flying height control during slider manufacturing process. Grinding, diamond-tip scribing and laser technologies have been used for the curvature adjustment. In this paper, stress-reducing technologies over the slider backside are studied for curvature adjustment. These technologies include lapping on a copper table with different size diamond, lapping on a tin table charged with diamond, and etching using inductive coupling plasma (ICP)system, which only use lapping or dry etching equipment, no specialized equipment are needed.