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 23):
The method of  claim 15 , further comprising:\n prior to thermally annealing the metal, depositing a barrier layer and a first seed layer in the cavities and on the field; depositing the metal on the first seed layer in the cavities and on the field to make a cavity layer filling the cavities, the cavity layer approximately the same thickness as the field layer, and the field layer having a greater thickness than an overburden part of the cavity layer over the cavities; planarizing the cavity layer and the field layer to a coplanar surface, wherein the field layer has a thickness approximately equal to an overburden part of the cavity layer over the cavities; and performing the step of thermally annealing the metal to create large grains of the metal in the cavity layer of the metal and small grains of the metal in the field layer of the metal.

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): 0.864216928176236
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.500936817514617
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8278889171100741
- Mean Citation Score: 224.554644
- Max Citation Score: 241.85347
- Similarity Product: 162.9640374861216

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