PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16206500
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-11
Publication Date: 2019-04
Patent Classification: ["438", "503000"]

Abstract:
A method and structure for providing a two-step defect reduction bake, followed by a high-temperature epitaxial layer growth. In various embodiments, a semiconductor wafer is loaded into a processing chamber. While the semiconductor wafer is loaded within the processing chamber, a first pre-epitaxial layer deposition baking process is performed at a first pressure and first temperature. In some cases, after the first pre-epitaxial layer deposition baking process, a second pre-epitaxial layer deposition baking process is then performed at a second pressure and second temperature. In some embodiments, the second pressure is different than the first pressure. By way of example, after the second pre-epitaxial layer deposition baking process and while at a growth temperature, a precursor gas may then be introduced into the processing chamber to deposit an epitaxial layer over the semiconductor wafer.

Claim (Index 13):
A method of semiconductor device fabrication, comprising:\n performing a two-step baking process of a semiconductor wafer within a process chamber to reduce a contaminant concentration of a semiconductor wafer growth surface; and after the performing the two-step baking process, growing an epitaxial layer on the semiconductor wafer growth surface, wherein the reduced contaminant concentration of the semiconductor wafer growth surface provides a corresponding reduction of contaminants within the epitaxial layer; wherein the two-step baking process includes a first baking step performed at a first pressure and a second baking step performed at a second pressure less than the first pressure, wherein the first baking step removes oxygen contamination and the second baking step removes carbon contamination, wherein each of the first and second baking steps are performed at a first temperature, and wherein the growing the epitaxial layer is performed at a second temperature different than the first temperature.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 5.0
- Percentile: 98.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.3871
- Patent Class: 438.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15089153', '10959602', '10993024', '10841369', '15918434']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8427015773622167
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.508437369596082
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8092751565856032
- Mean Citation Score: 197.240736
- Max Citation Score: 302.84164
- Similarity Product: 260.87096811501976

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