Patent ID: 7384567

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a thin film magnetic head, comprising: forming a lower electrode on a substrate, and then sequentially depositing a magnetic metal multi-layer and a photoresist on the lower electrode; forming a photoresist pattern using a mask process, and then etching the magnetic metal multi-layer using the formed photoresist pattern as a mask to expose the lower electrode to thereby form an etched metal multi-layer; performing a resist flow process which allows some of the photoresist pattern to be flown down to surround sidewalls of the etched metal multi-layer, wherein the photoresist pattern surrounding sidewalls of the etched metal multi-layer is formed at a predetermined thickness; depositing a hard magnet layer on an exposed top surface of the lower electrode, and an entire top surface and sidewalls of the flowed photoresist; removing the flowed photoresist and some of the hard magnet layer to form a patterned hard magnet layer; and forming an insulating layer on the resultant structure, and depositing and patterning an upper electrode to contact a part of the etched metal multi-layer.