US Patent Issued to American Air Liquide on June 10 for "Method to improve profile control during selective etching of silicon nitride spacers" (Delaware, New Jersey, California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,327,732, issued on June 10, was assigned to American Air Liquide Inc. (Fremont, Calif.).

"Method to improve profile control during selective etching of silicon nitride spacers" was invented by Xiangyu Guo (Newark, Del.), James Royer (Fremont, Calif.), Venkateswara R. Pallem (Branchburg, N.J.) and Nathan Stafford (Newark, Del.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Cyclic etch methods comprise the steps of: i) exposing a SiN layer covering a structure on a substrate in a reaction chamber to a plasma of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) to form a polymer layer deposited on the SiN layer that modifies the surface of the SiN layer, the HFC having a formula Cx...