Patent ID: 7832085

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a magnetic head, the magnetic head comprising: a medium facing surface that faces toward a recording medium; a magnetoresistive element having an end located in the medium facing surface and reading data stored on the recording medium; a coil that generates a magnetic field corresponding to data to be written on the recording medium; and a pole layer that allows a magnetic flux corresponding to the magnetic field generated by the coil to pass therethrough and generates a write magnetic field for writing the data on the recording medium, wherein the pole layer includes: a track width defining portion including a first end located in the medium facing surface and a second end located away from the medium facing surface, and having a width that defines a track width; and a wide portion coupled to the second end of the track width defining portion and having a width greater than that of the track width defining portion, the method comprising the steps of: fabricating a magnetic head substructure in which a plurality of pre-head portions each of which will be the magnetic head later are aligned in a plurality of rows, by forming components of a plurality of magnetic heads on a substrate; and fabricating the plurality of magnetic heads by separating the pre-head portions from one another through cutting the substructure, wherein: the step of fabricating the substructure includes the steps of: forming a magnetoresistive film unlapped that will become the magnetoresistive element by undergoing lapping later; detecting a resistance of the magnetoresistive film unlapped; determining a target position of a boundary between the track width defining portion and the wide portion of the pole layer based on the detected resistance of the magnetoresistive film unlapped; and forming a pre-lapping pole layer that includes the track width defining portion unlapped and the wide portion and that will become the pole layer by undergoing lapping of the track width defining portion later, the pre-lapping pole layer being formed such that an actual position of the boundary between the track width defining portion and the wide portion coincides with the target position, the step of fabricating the magnetic heads includes the step of forming the medium facing surface by performing lapping of a surface formed by cutting the substructure; in the step of forming the medium facing surface, the lapping of the surface formed by cutting the substructure includes lapping the magnetoresistive film and the track width defining portion of the pre-lapping pole layer simultaneously, and the lapping is performed such that the resistance of the magnetoresistive film reaches a predetermined value; and as a result of the lapping, the magnetoresistive film becomes the magnetoresistive element and the pre-lapping pole layer becomes the pole layer.