Patent ID: 8194512

Claim:
A thermally-assisted recording (TAR) head structure for a magnetic recording disk drive comprising: a semiconductor substrate having a back surface and a front surface generally parallel to said back surface; a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) on said front surface, the VCSEL having a laser radiation output surface generally parallel to said front surface, the laser radiation being output in a direction substantially perpendicular to said output surface; a back mirror on said back surface, the semiconductor substrate between the back mirror and the VCSEL forming an extended cavity for the VCSEL; a TAR head formed on and in contact with the VCSEL output surface, the TAR head comprising: a layer of electrically insulating material, the insulating layer having a disk-facing surface generally orthogonal to said back and front semiconductor substrate surfaces; an optical waveguide oriented generally parallel to said output surface, the waveguide having a grating coupler for directing laser radiation from the output surface to the waveguide; a near-field transducer (NFT) coupled to the waveguide and located at the disk-facing surface for receipt of laser radiation from the waveguide; a write head having a write pole at the disk-facing surface; and a magnetoresistive read head having a sensing edge at the disk-facing surface.