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:
Sep. 02, 2003
Filed:
Jul. 25, 2001
Neal Ricks, Blacksburg, VA (US);
Shipley Company, L.L.C., Marlborough, MA (US);
Abstract
A method of producing surface features in a substrate includes steps of forming a film having a composition that varies in the direction of its thickness on the substrate, forming a mask on the heterogeneous film, etching the film to thereby pattern the film, and etching the structure that includes the patterned film to erode the film and correspondingly shape the substrate as the film is so being eroded. In this way, the pattern of the film is transferred to the substrate in a manner dependent on the selectivity of one or both of the etching processes as well as the thickness of the discrete mask layers, or in the case of a continuously graded film, the “slope” of the stoichiometric change with respect to position in the overall thickness of the film.