US Patent Issued to LAM RESEARCH on Dec. 16 for "Wafer lift pin mechanism for preventing local backside deposition" (Oregon Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,500,114, issued on Dec. 16, was assigned to LAM RESEARCH Corp. (Fremont, Calif.).

"Wafer lift pin mechanism for preventing local backside deposition" was invented by Andrew H. Breninger (Hillsboro, Ore.), Xinyi Chen (Beaverton, Ore.) and Tu Hong (Tualatin, Ore.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An apparatus includes a lift pinto raise and lower a semiconductor substrate relative to a substrate support assembly in a processing chamber. The lift pin includes a top end having a conical shape tapering downwardly and a bottom end having a cylindrical shape. The apparatus comprises a lift pin holder to hold the bottom end of the lift pin."

The p...