US Patent Issued to Lam Research on May 13 for "Ion beam etching with sidewall cleaning" (Arizona, Hawaii Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,302,760, issued on May 13, was assigned to Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, Calif.).

"Ion beam etching with sidewall cleaning" was invented by Thorsten Lill (Kalaheo, Hawaii) and Ivan L. Berry III (Green Valley, Ariz.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Patterned magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) stacks are formed by performing a main etch through a plurality of MRAM layers disposed on a substrate, where the main etch includes using ion beam etching (IBE). After the main etch, gapfill dielectric material is deposited in spaces between the patterned MRAM stacks, and the gapfill dielectric material is selectively etched or otherwise form...