Photoresist hardness study of high moment head magnetic recording fabrication

Due to the current requirement of high recording density of hard disk drive, the thickness of DLC layer which is the protective layer is needed to be reduced. Therefore, the corrosion of read-write elements that are fabricated from soft magnetic materials is more critical. During the photolithography process, polymer photoresist is playing the major role on controlling the corrosion of soft magnetic materials. Two different types of polymer photoresists are selected to investigate, noted as wet photoresist and dry photoresist, respectively. Contact angle measurement, AFM is techniques using to determine the quality of polymer photoresists. Furthermore, the direct investigation is also studied by using elastic modulus measurements. The result suggested that the positive wet photoresist is better as compared to that of dry negative photoresist. No surface degradation as well as surface defects of the wet photoresist was found after lithography process. In addition, the wet photoresist surface is hydrophobic posed of more than 90 degree of contact angle.