PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16015096
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-06
Publication Date: 2019-12
Patent Classification: ["438", "014000"]

Abstract:
Photoresist features can be characterized by electron microscopy-based metrology. A protective coating may be deposited on the photoresist with no change or minimal change to the dimensions of the underlying photoresist features, where the protective coating may be conformal and formed in a reactor operated under low temperature and low plasma conditions. In some implementations, the protective coating is formed by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition. Reliable and accurate profile information of photoresist features can be captured by metrology using the protective coating.

Claim (Index 22):
A system comprising:\n a deposition module; a metrology module; and a controller configured with instructions for performing the following operations:\n receiving a wafer having a photoresist in the deposition module; \n conformally depositing a protective coating on the photoresist, wherein the protective coating is conformally deposited in the deposition module operated under conditions with a wafer temperature being between about 20\u00b0 C. and about 60\u00b0 C. and a plasma power being between about 10 W and about 300 W, wherein conformally depositing the protective coating reduces a feature height of the photoresist by less than about 15%, changes a feature volume of the photoresist by less than about 15%, and/or changes a critical dimension of the photoresist by less than about 15%; and \n performing metrology on the photoresist with the photoresist in the metrology tool, wherein performing metrology on the photoresist includes exposing the wafer to an ion-beam or electron-beam irradiation.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 56.0
- Percentile: 94.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.6
- Patent Class: 438.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15902036', '15947402', '15849253', '10202956', '15411892']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8674017919792292
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4908146013198826
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8297430729132945
- Mean Citation Score: 199.51396
- Max Citation Score: 207.69981
- Similarity Product: 143.9412088789666

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 0
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test