Patent ID: 8056214

Claim:
A manufacturing method for a magnetic head for perpendicular magnetic recording, the magnetic head comprising: a medium facing surface that faces a recording medium; a coil that produces a magnetic field corresponding to data to be written on the recording medium; a pole layer that has an end face located in the medium facing surface, allows a magnetic flux corresponding to the magnetic field produced by the coil to pass and produces a write magnetic field for writing the data on the recording medium by means of a perpendicular magnetic recording system; a top shield that is made of a magnetic material and has an end face located in the medium facing surface at a position forward of the end face of the pole layer along a direction of travel of the recording medium; a gap layer that is made of a nonmagnetic material, disposed between the pole layer and the top shield and has an end face located in the medium facing surface; a first side shield and a second side shield disposed on both sides of the pole layer that are opposite to each other in a track width direction, each of the side shields being made of a magnetic material and having an end face located in the medium facing surface; and an encasing layer that is made of a nonmagnetic material and has a pole groove accommodating the pole layer, a first side shield groove accommodating the first side shield, and a second side shield groove accommodating the second side shield, the manufacturing method comprising the steps of: forming a nonmagnetic layer that is to be made into the encasing layer by forming the pole groove and the first and second side shield grooves therein afterward; forming an etching mask layer on the nonmagnetic layer, the etching mask layer having a first opening, a second opening and a third opening that have shapes respectively corresponding to the pole groove, a first initial side shield groove and a second initial side shield groove to be formed afterward; forming the pole groove in the nonmagnetic layer by etching using the etching mask layer; forming the first and second initial side shield grooves in the nonmagnetic layer by etching using the etching mask layer; completing the first and second side shield grooves by etching a wall face of the first initial side shield groove that is closer to the pole groove and a wall face of the second initial side shield groove that is closer to the pole groove by employing dry etching so that the first initial side shield groove is made into the first side shield groove while the second initial side shield groove is made into the second side shield groove; forming the pole layer; forming the first and second side shields; forming the gap layer; forming the top shield; and forming the coil.