ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,482,667, issued on Nov. 25, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).
"Thermal etching of ruthenium" was invented by Hisashi Higuchi (Nirasaki, Japan), Kai-Hung Yu (Albany, N.Y.), Cory Wajda (Albany, N.Y.), Gyanaranjan Pattanaik (Albany, N.Y.), Kandabara Tapily (Albany, N.Y.), Gerrit Leusink (Albany, N.Y.) and Robert Clark (Leuven, Belgium).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments of methods are provided for thermal dry etching of a ruthenium (Ru) metal layer. In the disclosed embodiments, a substrate containing a Ru metal layer formed thereon is exposed to a gas pulse sequence, while the substrate is held at a relatively high substr...