PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16039488
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-07
Publication Date: 2018-11
Patent Classification: ["216", "084000"]

Abstract:
An upper processing liquid nozzle moves back and forth between a processing position above a substrate held on a spin chuck and a standby position outside a processing cup. Before a processing liquid is discharged from the upper processing liquid nozzle having moved to the processing position, a camera takes a discharge standard image of an imaging region including the tip of the upper processing liquid nozzle. Then, multiple monitor target images of the imaging region taken successively by the camera are compared sequentially to the discharge standard image to determine discharge of a processing liquid from the upper processing liquid nozzle. The discharge standard image is obtained for each process on a new target substrate. This eliminates influence of a substrate surface to appear as a background both of the monitor target image and the discharge standard image. Thus, discharge of a processing liquid can be detected reliably.

Claim (Index 17):
A substrate processing method of discharging a processing liquid to a substrate, comprising the steps of:\n (a) transporting a new target substrate into a chamber and holding said substrate with a substrate holder; (b) after said new target substrate is held by said substrate holder, moving a nozzle from which a processing liquid is discharged from a standby position outside a cup surrounding said substrate holder toward a processing position above said substrate held by said substrate holder; (c) taking an image of a determination region, a processing liquid appearing in said image of said determination region when said processing liquid is discharged from said nozzle in said processing position, a surface of said substrate held by said substrate holder appearing in said image of said determination region when discharge of a processing liquid from said nozzle stops; and (d) determining discharge of a processing liquid from said nozzle based on a determination image of said determination region taken in said step (c), wherein in said step (d), a processing liquid is determined to be discharged from said nozzle if a dispersion of the brightness levels of pixels in said determination image is smaller than a given threshold and a processing liquid is determined not to be discharged from said nozzle if said dispersion is larger than said threshold.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 8.0
- Percentile: 95.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.16438
- Patent Class: 216.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: True
- Related Applications: ['15343911', '14854235', '15208085', '15665956', '12582860']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.767615345033464
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4782696721976311
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7386807777498807
- Mean Citation Score: 225.931564
- Max Citation Score: 244.2157
- Similarity Product: 210.588415653044

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

Dataset: test