PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16040859
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-07
Publication Date: 2020-01
Patent Classification: ["216", "063000"]

Abstract:
An etching process is provided that includes a pre-clean process to remove a surface oxide of a dielectric material. The removal of the oxide can be executed through a thermal reaction and/or plasma process before the etch process. In some embodiments, the removal of the oxide increases etch process control and reproducibility and can improve the selectivity versus oxides.

Claim (Index 8):
A cyclic etch process, the process comprising:\n pre-cleaning a dielectric material to remove a surface oxide to provide a pre-cleaned dielectric surface, wherein pre-cleaning is achieved by thermal reaction and/or plasma process; cyclic dry etching the pre-cleaned dielectric surface, wherein cyclic dry etching comprises: repeated cycles of fluorination and ligand exchange with reactant gas; and repeated cycles of modification by thermal reaction with reactant gas and etching by thermal reaction with fluorine or chlorine containing gas, and wherein there is no break in vacuum between pre-cleaning and etching.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 70.0
- Percentile: 95.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.5
- Patent Class: 216.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['10273580', '15225489', '13614365', '15923722', '12174402']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7269727299743387
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4924905105288574
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7035245080297905
- Mean Citation Score: 208.13785
- Max Citation Score: 223.28867
- Similarity Product: 162.25034296087142

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