Magnetic head structure with diagonal of rectangular-shaped height monitor extending along track width direction

1. A magnetic head structure comprising at least one height monitor that is exposed in the vicinity of a head element unit to index the height of the head element unit during polishing processing that forms a medium facing surface of the head element unit,

wherein the height monitor is formed in a planar rectangular shape in a cross section parallel both to a height direction of the head element and to a track width direction of the head element, and

wherein a diagonal line of the planar rectangular shape extends along the track width direction.

2. The magnetic head structure according to claim 1 ,

wherein the height monitor is formed in a planar square shape.

3. The magnetic head structure according to claim 1 ,

wherein the height monitor has straight portions at individual sides of the rectangular shape, and indexes the height position of the head element unit in an effective monitor region defined by connecting a pair of the straight portions that are adjacent to each other in the track width direction.

4. The magnetic head structure according to claim 3 ,

wherein the height monitor adopts as a reference line a line obtained by connecting the midpoints of a pair of straight portions that define the effective monitor region, and indexes the height position of the head element unit by the amount of deviation with respect to the reference line.

5. The magnetic head structure according to claim 4 ,

wherein the at least one height monitor comprises one pair of height monitors that are provided on both sides of the head element unit in the track width direction, the reference line is located on the same straight line, and the pair of height monitors are arranged such that the reference line of one of the pair of height monitors is positioned below the diagonal line of one of the pair of height monitors in a height direction and such that the reference line of the other of the pair of height monitors is positioned above the diagonal line of the other of the pair of height monitors in a height direction.

6. The magnetic head structure according to claim 4 ,

further comprising an absolute value monitor that is exposed in the vicinity of the height monitor during the polishing processing to index the absolute value of the height of the head element unit, and the absolute value monitor is formed in a planar oblong shape, and is arranged by locating the midpoints of a pair of straight portions extending in the height direction of the oblong shape on the reference line.

7. A method of manufacturing the magnetic head structure according to claim 6 ,

wherein the height monitor and the absolute value monitor are formed so as to form the following conditional expressions during the polishing processing of forming the medium facing surface of the head element unit:

p =( c−S )/2

h =( L−D− 2×(1−2 1/2 )× p )/2

where

h: the height of the head element unit obtained by the polishing processing,

L: the width of the height monitor exposed to the medium facing surface by the polishing processing,

c: a width reference value of the absolute value monitor,

S: the width of the absolute value monitor exposed to the medium facing surface by the polishing processing,

p: the increase/reduction amount from the reference value after the polishing processing, and

D: the width reference value of the height monitor at h=0.

8. A method of manufacturing the magnetic head structure according to claim 6 ,

wherein the at least one height monitor comprises a pair of height monitors, the pair of height monitors and the absolute value monitor are formed so as to form the following conditional expressions during the polishing processing of forming the medium facing surface of the head element unit:

p =( c−S )/2

h =( L−R )/4 +f−p

where

h: the height of the head element unit obtained by the polishing processing,

L: the width of one of the pair of height monitors exposed to the medium facing surface by the polishing processing,

R: the width of the other of the pair of height monitors exposed to the medium facing surface by the polishing processing,

f: the height-direction length from h=0 to the reference line,

c: a width reference value of the absolute value monitor,

S: the width of the absolute value monitor exposed to the medium facing surface by the polishing processing, and

p: the increase/reduction amount from the reference value after the polishing processing.