PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15867036
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-01
Publication Date: 2019-07
Patent Classification: ["257", "350000"]

Abstract:
Disclosed are methods for forming an integrated circuit with a nanowire-type field effect transistor and the resulting structure. A sacrificial gate is formed on a multi-layer fin. A sidewall spacer is formed with a gate section on the sacrificial gate and fin sections on exposed portions of the fin. Before or after removal of the exposed portions of the fin, the fins sections of the sidewall spacer are removed or reduced in size without exposing the sacrificial gate. Thus, the areas within which epitaxial source/drain regions are to be formed will not be bound by sidewall spacers. Furthermore, isolation material, which is deposited into these areas prior to epitaxial source/drain region formation and which is used to form isolation elements between the transistor gate and source/drain regions, can be removed without removing the isolation elements. Techniques are also disclosed for simultaneous formation of a nanosheet-type and/or fin-type field effect transistors.

Claim (Index 12):
The method of  claim 10 ,\n wherein the forming of the sidewall spacer comprises:\n conformally depositing a spacer layer; and \n selectively and anisotropically etching the spacer layer to remove horizontal portions of the spacer layer and form the sidewall spacer such that the top surface of the gate section is below a level of a top surface of the sacrificial gate cap, wherein the forming of the protective cap on the gate section comprises: \n forming a sacrificial material layer adjacent to the sidewall spacer such that a top surface of the sacrificial material layer is above a level of the top surfaces of the fin sections and at or below a level of the top surface of the gate section; \n conformally depositing a protective cap layer; \n selectively and anisotropically etching the protective cap layer to remove horizontal portions of the protective cap layer and form the protective cap on the gate section and positioned laterally adjacent to the sacrificial gate cap; and \n removing the sacrificial material layer, \n wherein the removing of the fin sections comprises: after the forming of the protective cap, selectively and anisotropically etching the spacer layer until the fin sections are completely removed, and wherein the gate section is protected by the protective cap during removal of the fin sections in order to prevent exposure of the sacrificial gate.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 17.0
- Percentile: 86.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.95181
- Patent Class: 257.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: none
- Component Type: 0
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15387933', '15658835', '15787009', '15715220', '15862064']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.9402733223296708
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5348436802433642
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8997303581210402
- Mean Citation Score: 353.47274199999987
- Max Citation Score: 374.74036
- Similarity Product: 257.41927897454985

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