ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,237,174, issued on Feb. 25, was assigned to HITACHI HIGH-TECH Corp. (Tokyo).
"Etching method" was invented by Kazunori Shinoda (Tokyo), Hirotaka Hamamura (Tokyo), Kenji Maeda (Tokyo), Kenetsu Yokogawa (Tokyo), Kenji Ishikawa (Aichi, Japan) and Masaru Hori (Aichi, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Provided is an etching technique providing higher uniformity of etching amount and a higher yield of etching processing. An etching method for etching a film layer as a processing object containing nitride of transition metal, the film layer being disposed on a surface of a wafer, includes a step of supplying reactive particles containing flu...