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US 9,284,649 B2Granted
Method of patterning a stack
AssigneeSeagate Technology LLC
InventorsMichael R. Feldbaum, Justin Jia-Jen Hwu, David S. Kuo, Gennady Gauzner, Kim Yang Lee, Li-Ping Wang
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The embodiments disclose a method of fabricating a stack, including replacing a metal layer of a stack imprint structure with an oxide layer, patterning the oxide layer stack using chemical etch processes to transfer the pattern image and cleaning etch residue from the stack imprint structure to substantially prevent contamination of the metal layers.
Claims24
A structure, comprising:
- a magnetic layer with an amorphous carbon layer thereon, upon which is an oxide layer with a resist layer thereon comprising an imprinted pattern having nanometer-sized features corresponding to a bit-patterned medium,
- wherein the resist layer etches about 5 times faster than the amorphous carbon layer under oxygen plasma etching conditions, and
- wherein the oxide layer is configured to prevent metallic-residue contamination of the amorphous carbon layer during patterning.
A structure, comprising:
- a magnetic layer with an amorphous carbon layer thereon, upon which is an oxide layer with a resist layer thereon,
- wherein the resist layer etches about 5 times faster than the amorphous carbon layer under oxygen plasma etching conditions, and
- wherein the oxide layer prevents metallic-residue contamination of the amorphous carbon layer by metallic residue during patterning.
A structure, comprising:
- a magnetic layer,
- an amorphous carbon layer;
- an oxide layer;
- and
- a resist layer,
- wherein succeeding layers of the foregoing sequence of layers are in overlying contact with preceding layers,
- wherein the resist layer etches 5 times faster than the amorphous carbon layer under oxygen plasma etching conditions,
- wherein the oxide layer has sufficient adhesion to the resist layer to facilitate clean removal of a resist-imprinting template,
- wherein the oxide layer prevents metallic-residue contamination of the amorphous carbon layer by metallic residue during patterning, and
- wherein the oxide layer is 1-3 nm thick of an oxide of tantalum or silicon.
7 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.