Gold-Copper Alloy In A Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording Writer

A device comprising:

• a main pole;
• a heat sink disposed adjacent to the main pole;
• a bi-layer structure planar plasmon generator (PPG) structure comprising:
• a plasmon generator (PG) layer comprising an Iridium (Ir) film;
• and
• a bottom plasmonic layer comprising a gold-copper (Au—Cu) alloy;
• a body layer disposed adjacent to the Ir film, the body layer comprising Iridium;
• a first dielectric spacer layer disposed between the main pole and the PG layer;
• a second dielectric spacer layer disposed adjacent to the bottom plasmonic layer;
• and
• a reactive-ion etching (RIE) stopper layer disposed between the bottom plasmonic layer and the second dielectric layer.

A method for manufacturing a heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) write head, the method comprising:

• disposing a bottom plasmonic layer over a first dielectric layer, the bottom plasmonic layer comprising a gold-copper (Au—Cu) alloy;
• disposing a plasmon generator (PG) layer comprising an Iridium (Ir) film over the bottom plasmonic layer;
• disposing a body layer comprising Iridium over the PG layer;
• disposing a second dielectric layer and a heat sink over the body layer;
• and
• disposing a main pole comprising a magnetic metallic material over the second dielectric layer and the heat sink.