PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15986183
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-05
Publication Date: 2019-11
Patent Classification: ["438", "003000"]

Abstract:
A MTJ stack is deposited on a bottom electrode. A metal hard mask is deposited on the MTJ stack and a dielectric mask is deposited on the metal hard mask. A photoresist pattern is formed on the dielectric mask, having a critical dimension of more than about 65 nm. The dielectric and metal hard masks are etched wherein the photoresist pattern is removed. The dielectric and metal hard masks are trimmed to reduce their critical dimension to 10-60 nm and to reduce sidewall surface roughness. The dielectric and metal hard masks and the MTJ stack are etched wherein the dielectric mask is removed and a MTJ device is formed having a small critical dimension of 10-60 nm, and having further reduced sidewall surface roughness.

Claim (Index 13):
A method comprising:\n forming a magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ) stack on a first electrode; forming a conductive hard mask on the MTJ stack; forming a dielectric mask directly on the conductive hard mask such that the dielectric mask physically contacts the conductive hard mask; patterning the dielectric mask and the conductive hard mask, wherein a roughness of a sidewall surface of the conductive hard mask is increased after the patterning of the dielectric mask and the conductive hard mask; trimming the patterned dielectric mask and the patterned conductive hard mask to reduce the roughness of the sidewall surface of the conductive hard mask; and patterning the trimmed patterned dielectric mask, the trimmed patterned conductive hard mask and the MTJ stack, wherein the patterning of the trimmed patterned dielectric mask includes completely removing the trimmed patterned dielectric mask, wherein the patterning of the trimmed patterned conductive hard mask further reduces the roughness of the sidewall surface of the conductive hard mask.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 16.0
- Percentile: 93.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.80851
- Patent Class: 438.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15947512', '15902415', '15856129', '15595484', '15668113']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8807888176102459
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5282146748673958
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8455314033359609
- Mean Citation Score: 327.216164
- Max Citation Score: 358.7005
- Similarity Product: 279.6196995744705

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test