Patent ID: 8108986

Claim:
A method for manufacturing a magnetic write head for perpendicular magnetic data recording, comprising: providing a substrate formed on a wafer; depositing a magnetic write pole material on the substrate; forming a mask structure over the magnetic write pole material; performing first ion milling, the first ion milling being performed at an angle relative to a normal to a surface of the wafer; after performing the first ion milling, performing a second ion milling, the second ion milling being performed at a larger angle relative to the normal to the surface of the wafer, and being performed while moving the wafer laterally in a linear direction without rotating the wafer; wherein the forming a mask structure further comprises, before performing the first and second ion millings; depositing a hard mask layer; depositing an image transfer layer; depositing a photoresist layer; photolithographically patterning the photoresist layer; and performing an image transfer ion milling to transfer the image of the photoresist layer onto the underlying image transfer layer and hard mask layer.