US Patent Issued to Lam Research on Oct. 28 for "Inert gas implantation for hard mask selectivity improvement" (Oregon, Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,456,621, issued on Oct. 28, was assigned to Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, Calif.).

"Inert gas implantation for hard mask selectivity improvement" was invented by Daniela Anjos Rigsby (Tualatin, Ore.), Ragesh Puthenkovilakam (Portland, Ore.), Alice G. Hollister (Houston) and Lie Zhao (Lake Oswego, Ore.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An amorphous carbon hard mask is formed having low hydrogen content and low sp3 carbon bonding but high modulus and hardness. The amorphous carbon hard mask is formed by depositing an amorphous carbon layer at a low temperature in a plasma deposition chamber and treating the amorphous carbon layer to a dual pla...