Patent ID: 8102623

Claim:
A thin-film magnetic head with a perpendicular magnetic recording structure, comprising: a main pole layer; a nonmagnetic gap layer; an auxiliary pole layer facing said main pole layer via said nonmagnetic gap layer; a surface of a top end section of said auxiliary pole layer having a first inclined step that slopes with respect to a lamination plane of the layers; and a surface of a top end section of said main pole layer having a second inclined step that slopes with respect to the lamination plane of the layers, said surface of the top end section of said main pole layer facing the top end section of said auxiliary pole layer, said first inclined step facing said second inclined step, said top end section of said auxiliary pole layer having a recess running along a height direction from said first inclined step, said recess being formed at a position that is not exposed to an air bearing surface, said height direction being a direction leaving from and perpendicular to the air bearing surface, and side walls of said recess facing at least part of side surfaces in a track-width direction of said main pole layer so as to cover at least part of said second inclined step, and a distance between a side surface in the track-width direction, of said top end section of said main pole layer and said side walls of said recess is 4 μm or less.