The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 03, 2020
Filed:
Oct. 25, 2017
Lam Research Corporation, Fremont, CA (US);
Ivan L. Berry, III, San Jose, CA (US);
Thorsten Lill, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Kenneth Reese Reynolds, San Jose, CA (US);
Lam Research Corporation, Fremont, CA (US);
Abstract
One process used to remove material from a surface is ion etching. In certain cases, ion etching involves delivery of both ions and a reactive gas to a substrate. The disclosed embodiments permit local high pressure delivery of reactive gas to a substrate while maintaining a much lower pressure on portions of the substrate that are outside of the local high pressure delivery area. In many cases, the low pressure is achieved by providing an injection head that confines the high pressure reactant delivery to a small area and vacuums away excess reactants and byproducts as they leave this small area and before they enter the larger substrate processing region. The disclosed injection head may be used to increase throughput while minimizing deleterious collisions between ions and other species present in the substrate processing region. The disclosed injection head may also be used in other types of semiconductor wafer processing.