US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on Sept. 16 for "Techniques and apparatus for selective shaping of mask features using angled beams" (Massachusetts Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,417,923, issued on Sept. 16, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Techniques and apparatus for selective shaping of mask features using angled beams" was invented by John Hautala (Beverly, Mass.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method may include providing a set of features in a mask layer, wherein a given feature comprises a first dimension along a first direction, second dimension along a second direction, orthogonal to the first direction, and directing an angled ion beam to a first side region of the set of features in a first exposure, wherein the first side region is etched a first amount along the first ...