PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16159461
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-10
Publication Date: 2019-04
Patent Classification: ["438", "585000"]

Abstract:
Embodiments described herein generally relate to enable the formation of a metal gate structure with a reduced effective oxide thickness over a similar structure formed via conventional methods. A plasma hydrogenation process followed by a plasma nitridization process is performed on a metal nitride layer in a film stack, thereby removing oxygen atoms disposed within layers of the film stack and, in some embodiments eliminating an oxygen-containing interfacial layer disposed within the film stack. As a result, an effective oxide thickness of the metal gate structure is reduced with little or no accompanying flatband voltage shift. Further, the metal gate structure operates with an increased leakage current that is as little as one quarter the increase in leakage current associated with a similar metal gate structure formed via conventional techniques.

Claim (Index 30):
A method of forming a structure in a semiconductor device, the method comprising:\n depositing a high-k dielectric layer on a semiconductor substrate; depositing a metal nitride layer on the high-k dielectric layer to form a portion of the structure while a bias is applied to the pedestal; and reducing the first effective oxide thickness to a second effective oxide thickness by sequentially exposing the exposed surface to a non-oxidizing plasma-excited hydrogen species followed by a plasma-excited nitrogen species.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 35.0
- Percentile: 97.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.79221
- Patent Class: 438.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15442311', '15438490', '15874132', '13006642', '14167532']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8772366523369712
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5508223907368689
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.844595226176961
- Mean Citation Score: 300.08334599999995
- Max Citation Score: 409.64313
- Similarity Product: 368.89272135723536

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