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:
Nov. 14, 2017
Filed:
Jan. 04, 2017
Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Aurelien Tavernier, East Palo Alto, CA (US);
Qingjun Zhou, San Jose, CA (US);
Tom Choi, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Yungchen Lin, Los Angeles, CA (US);
Ying Zhang, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Olivier Joubert, Meylan, FR;
APPLIED MATERIALS, INC., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
Embodiments described herein relate to methods for etching a substrate. Patterning processes, such as double patterning and quadruple patterning processes, may benefit from the embodiments described herein which include performing an inert plasma treatment to implant ions into a spacer material, performing an etching process on an implanted region of the spacer material, and repeating the inert plasma treatment and the etching process to form a predominantly flat top spacer profile. The inert plasma treatment process may be a biased process and the etching process may be an unbiased process. Various processing parameters, such as pressure, may be controlled to influence a desired spacer profile.