Patent ID: 7378029

Claim:
A method for manufacturing a magnetic recording medium comprising: a non-magnetic material filling step of depositing a non-magnetic material over a recording layer formed in a predetermined concavo-convex pattern over a substrate to fill a concave portion of the concavo-convex pattern with the non-magnetic material; and a flattening step of removing an excess part of the non-magnetic material above the recording layer so that the non-magnetic material remains in the concave portion by dry etching to flatten surfaces of the recording layer and the non-magnetic material, wherein a processing condition is set so as to substantially equalize an etching rate of the non-magnetic material with an etching rate of the recording layer, with respect to the dry etching in the flattening step; a composite material including a plurality of types of materials with different etching rates with respect to the dry etching is used as the non-magnetic material; and a component ratio of a material included in the composite material is restricted within a predetermined range as the setting of the processing condition.