ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,374,532, issued on July 29, was assigned to Hitachi High-Tech Corp. (Tokyo).
"Plasma processing method" was invented by Mai Isomoto (Tokyo), Hitoshi Kobayashi (Tokyo), Ryota Takahashi (Tokyo) and Satoshi Une (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An object of the invention is to provide a plasma processing method for preventing generation of deposition from an underlying metal film and attaining an anisotropic shape in hard mask etching. The plasma processing method for forming a mask using a film to be etched whose underlying layer is a metal film according to the invention includes: a first step of etching, using a plasma generated by m...