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:
Jun. 09, 2026
Filed:
Jan. 04, 2022
Lam Research Corporation, Fremont, CA (US);
Liu Yang, Seattle, WA (US);
Mengping Li, Sherwood, OR (US);
Shantinath Ghongadi, Tigard, OR (US);
Andrew James Pfau, Portland, OR (US);
Lam Research Corporation, Fremont, CA (US);
Abstract
Methods provided herein may include illuminating a region on a wafer within a semiconductor processing tool, the wafer having a layer of a material that is at least semi-transparent to light and has a measurable extinction coefficient, and the region being a first fraction of the wafer's surface, detecting light reflected off the material and off a surface underneath the material using one or more detectors and generating optical data corresponding to the detected light, generating a metric associated with a property of the material on the wafer by applying the optical data to a transfer function that relates the optical data to the metric associated with the property of the material on the wafer, determining an adjustment to one or more processing parameters for a processing module, and performing or modifying a processing operation in the processing module according to the adjusted one or more processing parameters.