ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,252,782, issued on March 18, was assigned to Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, Calif.).
"In-situ PECVD cap layer" was invented by Jeremy David Fields (Portland, Ore.), Ian John Curtin (Portland, Ore.), Joseph R. Abel (West Linn, Ore.), Frank Loren Pasquale (Tigard, Ore.) and Douglas Walter Agnew (Portland, Ore.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods for filling gaps with dielectric material involve deposition using an atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique to fill a gap followed by deposition of a cap layer on the filled gap by a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique. The ALD deposition may be a plasma-enhanced ALD (PEALD) or thermal AL...