Patent ID: 7993535

Claim:
A method for fabricating a device, comprising: forming a removable mask on a surface of a thin-film stack; performing vertical or near-vertical ion milling to form a device structure out of the thin-film stack that is in a pattern of the removable mask; performing grazing-angle ion milling at one or more predetermined grazing angles to remove re-deposition material left during the vertical or near-vertical ion milling; forming a first insulation layer covering the removable mask and the device structure; and lifting off the removable mask to expose a top portion of the device structure through a hole in the first insulation layer, said hole having a feature size in the sub-65 nm range, wherein the grazing-angle ion milling is performed multiple times, once for each layer of the thin-film stack that is in the pattern of the removable mask and for each instance of grazing-angle ion milling, a different grazing angle is used.