US Patent Issued to Applied Materials, National University of Singapore on June 10 for "Methods to reduce UNCD film roughness" (Singaporean, American Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,327,733, issued on June 10, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and National University of Singapore (Singapore).

"Methods to reduce UNCD film roughness" was invented by Vicknesh Sahmuganathan (Singapore), Eswaranand Venkatasubramanian (Santa Clara, Calif.), Jiteng Gu (Singapore), Kian Ping Loh (Singapore), Abhijit Basu Mallick (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and John Sudijono (Singapore).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Hard masks and methods of forming hard masks are described. The hard mask has an average roughness less than 10 nm and a modulus greater than or equal to 400 GPa. The method comprises exposing a substrate to a ...