PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15874132
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-01
Publication Date: 2018-08
Patent Classification: ["438", "592000"]

Abstract:
A sequential plasma process is employed to enable the modification of the work function of a p-type metal layer in a metal gate structure. The sequential plasma process includes a plasma hydrogenation and a plasma process that includes electronegative species. The sequential plasma process is performed on a p-type metal layer in a film stack, thereby replacing suboxides and/or other non-stoichiometrically combined electronegative atoms disposed on or within layers of the film stack with stoichiometrically combined electronegative atoms, such as O atoms. As a result, the work function of the p-type metal layer can be modified without changing a thickness of the p-type metal layer.

Claim (Index 1):
A method of forming a transistor, the method comprising:\n depositing a high-k dielectric layer over a surface of a semiconductor material, wherein the surface of the semiconductor material has a first work function value; after depositing the high-k dielectric layer, depositing a p-type metal layer over the semiconductor material and the high-k dielectric layer, wherein the p-type metal layer has an exposed surface and a second work function value; exposing the exposed surface of the p-type metal layer to plasma-excited electronegative species to change the first work function value to a third work function value, wherein the third work function value is between the first work function value and the second work.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 1.0
- Percentile: 86.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.93103
- Patent Class: 438.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15442311', '11045124', '11731265', '15438490', '13634350']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8494773941108378
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4898122148853741
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8135108761882914
- Mean Citation Score: 189.41911800000003
- Max Citation Score: 233.98763
- Similarity Product: 180.43769035876275

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

Dataset: test