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:
May. 06, 2025
Filed:
Feb. 28, 2023
Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Kartik Ramaswamy, San Jose, CA (US);
Yue Guo, Redwood City, CA (US);
A N M Wasekul Azad, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Yang Yang, San Diego, CA (US);
Nicolas J. Bright, Arlington, WA (US);
Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for spatially switching radio frequency (RF) power from a single RF power generator to a selected one of two or more impedance matching networks coupled to associated RF electrodes for forming plasma in a plasma chamber. Full RF power may be switched within microseconds to the selected one of the two or more impedance matching networks. The two or more impedance matching networks may be coupled to one or more plasma generating electrodes. The two or more impedance matching networks may be interleaved during plasma processing recipe operation. Impedance matching networks can alternate back and forth during operation of a plasma processing recipe. This interleaving in operation and impedance transformation capabilities may also be performed with more than two impedance matching networks, and may be beneficial in enabling the use of fixed tuned impedance matching networks instead of requiring variable impedance matching networks having variable tuning capabilities.