ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,444,618, issued on Oct. 14, was assigned to HITACHI HIGH-TECH Corp. (Tokyo).
"Etching method and etching apparatus" was invented by Thi-Thuy-Nga Nguyen (Aichi, Japan), Kenji Ishikawa (Aichi, Japan), Masaru Hori (Aichi, Japan), Kazunori Shinoda (Tokyo) and Hirotaka Hamamura (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for selective removal of a titanium aluminum carbide film against titanium aluminum nitride films by using near atmospheric pressure plasma that is a rich non-halogen radical source to produce various radicals (e.g. NH, H, CHx, N, Ar, OH, O) from Ar and liquid vapor for film surface modification. The modified layer is able...