US Patent Issued to APPLIED MATERIALS on Oct. 7 for "Methods and apparatus for mask patterning debris removal" (Singaporean, American, Indian Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,437,999, issued on Oct. 7, was assigned to APPLIED MATERIALS Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Methods and apparatus for mask patterning debris removal" was invented by Karthik Narayanan Balakrishnan (Singapore), Jungrae Park (Cupertino, Calif.), Arunkumar Tatti (Bangalore, India), Sriskantharajah Thirunavukarasu (Singapore) and Eng Sheng Peh (Singapore).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods and apparatus for laser patterning leverage mask trench debris removal techniques to form etch singulation trenches. In some embodiments, the method includes forming a mask layer on the wafer, forming a pattern in the mask layer using a laser of a laser as...