Patent ID: 7037847

Claim:
A method for fabricating a magnetic head, comprising: fabricating a plurality of read head sensor layers; fabricating a mask removal layer upon said read head sensor layers; fabricating a first reactive ion etch (RIE) layer upon said mask removal layer; fabricating a second RIE layer upon said first RIE layer, where said second RIE layer is etchable with a different ion species than said first RIE layer; fabricating a stencil layer upon said second RIE layer; patterning said stencil layer to create an etching stencil; etching said second RIE layer, where said stencil acts as a first RIE mask; etching said first RIE layer, where said second RIE layer acts as a second RIE etching mask; milling said read head sensor layers in an ion milling step to create a read sensor having a read track width W where said first RIE layer acts as a milling mask; performing a mask removal step to remove remaining portions of said first RIE etching mask and said second RIE etching mask.