Hard disk drive thin film head manufactured using nanoimprint lithography

Daniel B. Sullivan; Thomas Boonstra; Mark T. Kief; Lily Youtt; Sethuraman Jayashankar; Carolyn Van Dorn; Harold Gentile; Sriram Viswanathan; Dexin Wang; Dion Song; Dongsung Hong; Sung-Hoon Gee

doi:10.1117/12.2048829

28 March 2014 Hard disk drive thin film head manufactured using nanoimprint lithography

Daniel B. Sullivan, Thomas Boonstra, Mark T. Kief, Lily Youtt, Sethuraman Jayashankar, Carolyn Van Dorn, Harold Gentile, Sriram Viswanathan, Dexin Wang, Dion Song, Dongsung Hong, Sung-Hoon Gee

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9049, Alternative Lithographic Technologies VI; 90490Z (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2048829
Event: SPIE Advanced Lithography, 2014, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

The lithographic requirements for the thin film head industry are comparable to the semiconductor industry for certain parameters such as resolution and pattern repeatability. In other aspects such as throughput and defectivity, the requirements tend to be more relaxed. These requirements match well with the strengths and weaknesses reported concerning nanoimprint lithography (NIL) and suggest an alternative approach to optical lithography. We have demonstrated the proof of concept of using NIL patterning, in particular Jet and Flash^TM Imprint Lithography (J-FIL^TM) ¹ , to build functional thin film head devices with performance comparable to standard wafer processing techniques. An Imprio^TM 300 tool from Molecular Imprints, Inc. (MII) was modified to process the AlTiC ceramic wafers commonly used in the thin film head industry. Templates were produced using commercially viable photomask manufacturing processes and the AlTiC wafer process flow was successfully modified to support NIL processing. Future work is identified to further improve lithographic performance including residual layer thickness uniformity, wafer topography, NIL→NIL overlay, and development of a large imprint field that exceeds what is available in optical lithography.

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Daniel B. Sullivan, Thomas Boonstra, Mark T. Kief, Lily Youtt, Sethuraman Jayashankar, Carolyn Van Dorn, Harold Gentile, Sriram Viswanathan, Dexin Wang, Dion Song, Dongsung Hong, and Sung-Hoon Gee "Hard disk drive thin film head manufactured using nanoimprint lithography", Proc. SPIE 9049, Alternative Lithographic Technologies VI, 90490Z (28 March 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2048829

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