PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15950330
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-04
Publication Date: 2018-09
Patent Classification: ["438", "758000"]

Abstract:
Techniques are disclosed for methods and apparatuses for performing continuous-flow plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD). Plasma gas, containing one or more component gases, is continuously flowed to a planar inductive coupled plasma source attached at an upper end of a cylindrical chamber. Plasma is separated from the ALD volume surrounding a wafer/substrate in the lower end of the chamber by a combination of a grounded metal plate and a ceramic plate. Each plate has a number of mutually aligned holes. The ceramic plate has holes with a diameter less than 2 Debye lengths and has a large aspect ratio. This prevents damaging plasma flux from entering the ALD volume into which a gaseous metal precursor is also pulsed. The self-limiting ALD reaction involving the heated substrate, the excited neutrals from the plasma gas, and the metal precursor produce an ultra-uniform, high quality film on the wafer. A batch configuration to simultaneously coat multiple wafers is also disclosed.

Claim (Index 1):
An atomic layer deposition (ALD) system comprising:\n (a) a cylindrical chamber comprising an upper portion and a lower portion such that said upper portion and said lower portion are closed to obtain a sealed state of said chamber; (b) said upper portion comprising a planar inductively coupled plasma (ICP) source laterally affixed at its distal end from said lower portion; (c) a substrate placed atop a platen in said lower portion and heated by a platen heater to a desired temperature; (d) said substrate isolated from said ICP source in said chamber by a grounded metal plate laterally affixed above said substrate and a ceramic plate laterally affixed below said grounded metal plate but above said substrate, said grounded metal plate and said ceramic plate having a first plurality of holes and a second plurality of holes respectively such that each of said first plurality of holes is aligned with a corresponding hole of said second plurality of holes, and each of said second plurality of holes having a diameter less than two Debye lengths of a plasma continuously generated above said grounded metal plate from a gas A by said ICP source; (e) said gas A continuously delivered to said ICP source and said plasma terminated by said grounded metal plate; (f) a pulse of a gas B passed into said chamber from below said ceramic plate; (g) each of said gas A and said gas B comprising one or more individual chemical species; wherein excited neutrals of said gas A, said gas B and said substrate react in a self-limiting manner to produce a uniform atomically sized film on said substrate.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 13.0
- Percentile: 91.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.60185
- Patent Class: 438.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15950391', '15458642', '13656483', '13337728', '13337759']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8606659429994704
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5303584173222223
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8276351904317456
- Mean Citation Score: 255.27975
- Max Citation Score: 360.13443
- Similarity Product: 270.18814490565063

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

Dataset: test