PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15984679
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-05
Publication Date: 2018-09
Patent Classification: ["385", "050000"]

Abstract:
An integrated device and a fabrication method thereof are provided. In the device, by using various anisotropic silicon etching techniques, the silicon substrate layer and the expitaxial buffer layer under the device structure are removed, an ultra-thin device monolithically integrated with a suspended LED, an optical waveguide and a photodetector is obtained by further using the nitride back thinning etching technique. In the device, the light source, the optical waveguide and the photodetector are integrated on the same chip. The light emitted by the LED is laterally coupled to the optical waveguide, transmitted over the optical waveguide, and detected by the photodetector at the other end of the optical waveguide, thereby achieving a planar photon monolithically integrated device which is applied in the fields of optical transmission and optical sensing.

Claim (Index 6):
A method for fabricating an integrated device including a suspended LED, an optical waveguide, and a photodetector, the method comprising:\n step (1): polishing to thin the silicon substrate layer on the back of the silicon-based nitride wafer; step (2): coating a photoresist layer on the upper surface of the silicon-based nitride wafer, and defining an optical waveguide region and an n-GaN step region on the photoresist layer by using exposure technique, wherein the n-GaN step region comprises a lower stage and an upper stage; step (3): etching the n-GaN step region and the optical waveguide region by using a reactive ion beam; step (4): removing the remaining photoresist to obtain a step-shaped stage, an optical waveguide, a p-GaN layer arranged on an upper stage of the LED, a p-GaN layer of the photodetector, an InGaN/GaN quantum well of the LED, and an InGaN/GaN quantum well of the photodetector; step (5): uniformly coating a photoresist layer on an upper surface of the silicon-based nitride wafer, etching to define a p-electrode window region of the LED and a p-electrode window region of the photodetector that are arranged on the upper stage, an n-electrode window region of the LED and an n-electrode window region of the photodetector that are arranged on the lower stage, vapor depositing Ni/Au on the p-electrode window region and the n-electrode window region respectively to form an Ohmic contact and practice a p-electrode and an n-electrode, and removing the remaining photoresist to obtain the LED and the photodetector; step (6): uniformly coating a photoresist layer on the upper surface of the silicon-based nitride wafer, and etching in the optical waveguide region to define an isolation trench window region that is arranged between the LED and the photodetector and isolates the optical waveguide region; step (7): etching from top to bottom the nitride layer to the n-GaN layer to obtain an isolation trench by using a reactive ion beam; step (8): coating an adhesive on a top layer of the silicon-based nitride wafer to protect the surface device from being damaged during etching, spin coating a photoresist layer on a lower surface of the silicon substrate layer of the silicon-based nitride wafer, and defining a back etching window aligning with and totally covering the optical waveguide, the suspended p-electrode region of the LED and the suspended p-electrode region of the photodetector by the back alignment technique; step (9): using the epitaxial buffer layer as an etching barrier layer, and etching the silicon-based substrate layer to a lower surface of the epitaxial buffer layer to form a cavity via a back etching window by using the back deep silicon etching technique; step (10): thinning the nitride on the epitaxial buffer layer and the n-GaN layer from bottom to top by using the nitride back thinning etching technique; and step (11): removing the remaining photoresist to obtain the monolithically integrated device for a suspended LED optical waveguide photodetector.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 7.0
- Percentile: 93.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.01408
- Patent Class: 385.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: True
- Related Applications: ['15973285', '15809598', '10394559', '15628195', '15975496']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8015535307973758
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5379737743776739
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7751955551554056
- Mean Citation Score: 243.945742
- Max Citation Score: 383.6408
- Similarity Product: 368.27275032982834

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