Patent ID: 7657992

Claim:
A method for fabricating a double coil PMR write head with a stitched write shield, comprising: providing a substrate, which can be an upper shield of an associated read head, the substrate having a front edge and a rear edge; forming a lower portion of said PMR write head on the substrate, said lower portion including a lower coil layer; forming an upper portion of said double coil PMR write head on said lower portion, the formation of said upper portion further comprising: forming a main pole layer on said lower portion, said main pole layer having a front edge and a rear edge; forming a write gap layer on said main pole layer, said write gap layer having a front edge which is coterminous with the front edge of said pole layer and a rear edge which does not extend to the rear edge of said pole layer, leaving an upper surface of a rear portion of said pole layer exposed; forming a stitched write shield (SWS) layer on said write gap layer, said SWS layer covering said write gap layer and the upper surface of the rear portion of said pole layer exposed; removing, using a photolithographic stencil and an ion-beam etch, an approximately central portion of said SWS layer to leave a small remaining portion extending rearward from a front edge of the SWS layer and a non-contiguous larger portion extending frontward from a rear of the SWS layer to a point in front of the rear edge of the write gap layer; refilling a region where said central portion of said SWS layer was removed, with a non-magnetic material; forming a trim mask over the refilled SWS layer and trimming said SWS layer, said write gap layer and said pole layer, in a self aligned process, to a final cross-sectional shape; applying a CMP process to reduce a combined vertical thickness of the trim mask, SWS layer, write gap layer and the pole layer to a final thickness, h; forming an upper shield layer over the trim mask layer, then removing a central portion of both the upper shield and the trim mask layers down to an upper surface of the refilled SWS layer, to leave a front and rear portion of said upper shield layer that are separated, wherein said front portion of the upper shield layer has a vertical front surface in an ABS plane; lining inside surfaces of said front and rear portions of the upper shield layer and the upper surface of said refilled SWS layer, with an insulating layer and forming an upper coil layer; forming a yoke layer between said front and rear portions of said upper shield layer, said yoke layer thereby magnetically connecting the main pole to the upper shield.