PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15987101
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-05
Publication Date: 2019-11
Patent Classification: ["257", "401000"]

Abstract:
A finFET structure includes an insulative cap over each gate in a vicinity of a first and second self-aligned contact (SAC) to source/drain regions thereof. The insulative cap has a bulbous upper insulative cap portion selectively grown to protect gate height loss during SAC opening formation. The bulbous upper insulative cap portion may be over just gates in the vicinity of the S/D regions, and optionally, over gates in the vicinity of a gate contact.

Claim (Index 6):
A method comprising:\n providing a preliminary structure including:\n a semiconductor fin on a substrate, \n a first source/drain (S/D) region defined in the semiconductor fin, \n a second source/drain (S/D) region defined in the semiconductor fin, the second S/D region spaced from the first source/drain region, \n a gate extending across the fin, the gate including a work function metal having a metal plug in a barrier liner thereover, wherein the gate extends across the semiconductor fin between the first S/D region and the second S/D region, and \n a sidewall spacer about the gate; \n forming a gate plug recess in at least the metal plug and the barrier liner within the sidewall spacer over the gate in each of: a first region between the first and second S/D regions, and a second region including a location for a gate contact; forming a lower insulative cap portion over each gate plug recess, and planarizing; forming a bulbous upper insulative cap portion on each lower insulative cap portion in at least the first region; forming self-aligned contact (SAC) openings to each of the first and second S/D regions by etching from over each of the first and second S/D regions; forming a gate contact opening by removing the lower insulative cap portion from over the gate in the second region; and depositing a conductor in the SAC openings and the gate contact opening to form SACs to the first and second S/D regions and the gate contact to the first gate.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 9.0
- Percentile: 93.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.70833
- Patent Class: 257.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15638087', '15067540', '15878452', '14021594', '15387933']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.9190009948028908
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4944584683776345
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.876546742160365
- Mean Citation Score: 238.01844
- Max Citation Score: 247.73738
- Similarity Product: 187.28260334665657

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