PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15994435
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-05
Publication Date: 2018-12
Patent Classification: ["438", "626000"]

Abstract:
Advanced flat metals for microelectronics are provided. While conventional processes create large damascene features that have a dishing defect that causes failure in bonded devices, example systems and methods described herein create large damascene features that are planar. In an implementation, an annealing process creates large grains or large metallic crystals of copper in large damascene cavities, while a thinner layer of copper over the field of a substrate anneals into smaller grains of copper. The large grains of copper in the damascene cavities resist dishing defects during chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP), resulting in very flat damascene features. In an implementation, layers of resist and layers of a second coating material may be applied in various ways to resist dishing during chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP), resulting in very flat damascene features.

Claim (Index 20):
The method of  claim 15 , further comprising:\n prior to covering the substrate with the metal to create the cavity layer and the field layer, applying a barrier layer and a first seed layer on the substrate, the first seed layer covering the cavities and the field; applying a resist masking on a part of the first seed layer covering the field; applying a second seed layer in the cavities, the second seed layer having a thickness of at least 50 nm; plating additional metal on the second seed layer in the cavities; removing the resist masking from the field layer; depositing additional metal on the cavity layer and on the first seed layer of the field to create a cavity layer of the metal thicker than the field layer of the metal; thermally annealing the cavity layer of the metal and the field layer of the metal; performing an intermediate chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) of the cavity layer of the metal and the field layer of the metal; planarizing the cavity layer of the metal down to the barrier layer covering the field to achieve the flat metal features; and removing the barrier layer covering the field.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 4.0
- Percentile: 93.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.87013
- Patent Class: 438.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['11602128', '13170095', '15919894', '10858766', '11893793']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8649851618975306
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4937193620090761
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8278585819086852
- Mean Citation Score: 224.554644
- Max Citation Score: 241.85347
- Similarity Product: 180.2404159374076

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