ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,248,252, issued on March 11, was assigned to Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, Calif.).
"Bubble defect reduction" was invented by Akhil N. Singhal (Portland, Ore.), Bart Jan van Schravendijk (Palo Alto, Calif.), Girish A. Dixit (San Jose, Calif.), David C. Smith (Lake Oswego, Ore.) and Siva Krishnan Kanakasabapathy (Pleasanton, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In some examples, a method of processing a substrate comprises applying a photoresist (PR) onto a surface of the substrate, pre-exposing the PR to ultra violet (UV) light before depositing or etching a metal oxide (MO) layer onto the PR, and depositing or etching a MO layer onto t...