ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,444,615, issued on Oct. 14, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).
"Forming a doped hardmask" was invented by Scott Falk (Essex, Mass.), Rajesh Prasad (Lexington, Mass.), Sarah Michelle Bobek (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Harry Whitesell (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Kurt Decker-Lucke (Santa Clara, Calif.), Kyu-Ha Shim (Santa Clara, Calif.), Adaeze Osonkie (Beverly, Mass.) and Tomohiko Kitajima (San Jose, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods for depositing a hardmask with ions implanted at different tilt angles are described herein. By performing ion implantation to dope an amorphous carbon hardmask at multiple tilt angles,...