PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15957998
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-04
Publication Date: 2018-08
Patent Classification: ["438", "692000"]

Abstract:
A method of removing a hard mask is provided. Gate stacks are patterned on a substrate, where the gate stacks include a polysilicon layer and the hard mask deposited over the polysilicon layer. A dielectric layer is deposited on the substrate and on the patterned gate stacks. A first portion of the dielectric layer is planarized by chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) to remove a topography of the dielectric layer. The hard mask and a second portion of the dielectric layer are removed by the CMP.

Claim (Index 1):
A method of removing a hard mask, the method comprising:\n patterning gate stacks on a substrate, wherein the gate stacks include a polysilicon layer and the hard mask deposited over the polysilicon layer, wherein the gate stacks are patterned in an isolated region and a dense region, and wherein gate stacks of the isolated region have lower thicknesses than gate stacks of the dense region; depositing a dielectric layer directly on exposed portions of the substrate between the gate stacks and on the patterned gate stacks, wherein the dielectric layer is deposited to a greater thickness over the isolated region; planarizing a first portion of the dielectric layer by chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) to remove the greater thickness of the dielectric layer over the isolated region; and removing the hard mask and a second portion of the dielectric layer by the CMP, wherein a thickness difference between the gate stacks in the isolated region and the gate stacks in the dense region is less than 30 \u212b after the removing of the hard mask and the second portion.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 41.0
- Percentile: 91.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.16279
- Patent Class: 438.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['13958661', '12704032', '13737664', '11228741', '11019850']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8663608193812576
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5434779273572944
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8340725301788613
- Mean Citation Score: 286.773486
- Max Citation Score: 395.53406
- Similarity Product: 354.4478018434382

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

Dataset: test