Patent ID: 7514016

Claim:
A method of finishing a surface of a slider for a hard disk drive, comprising: (a) providing a slider having a metal and a ceramic that differs from the metal; (b) lapping the slider with a lapping substrate and an abrasive slurry having a free abrasive between the slider and the lapping substrate such that portions of the metal and the ceramic are mechanically removed from the slider; (c) nanogrinding the slider with a nanogrinding substrate having a fixed abrasive and a nonabrasive chemical solution having no free abrasive, the nanogrinding substrate having an abrasive embedded in a surface thereof that mechanically removes additional portions of the metal and the ceramic from the slider without a free abrasive; and (d) selectively chemical mechanical removing an additional portion of the ceramic from the slider with the nonabrasive chemical solution by dissolving the additional portion of the ceramic, such that the slider defines a plane, both the metal and ceramic are removed from the slider to within about one nanometer of the plane, and the plane has a surface roughness of approximately 0.5 nm rms.