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 21):
The method of  claim 16 , further comprising:\n depositing a silicon-containing layer on the exposed surface; performing a thermal anneal process on the silicon-containing layer; and removing the silicon-containing layer.

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): 0.8789346791979034
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5448666719819825
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8455278784763113
- Mean Citation Score: 300.08334599999995
- Max Citation Score: 409.64313
- Similarity Product: 284.8941069070352

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