PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15860547
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-01
Publication Date: 2018-05
Patent Classification: ["427", "569000"]

Abstract:
Methods and systems for depositing material layers with gap variation between film deposition operations. One method includes depositing a material layer over a substrate. The depositing is performed in a plasma chamber having a bottom electrode and a top electrode. The method includes providing a substrate over the bottom electrode in the plasma chamber. The method sets a first gap between the bottom and top electrodes and performs plasma deposition to deposit a first film of the material layer over the substrate while the first gap is set between the bottom and top electrodes. The method then sets a second gap between the bottom a top electrodes and performs plasma deposition to deposit a second film of the material layer over the substrate while the second gap is set between the bottom and top electrodes. The material layer is defined by the first and second films and the first gap is varied to the second gap to offset expected non-uniformities when depositing the first film followed by the second film.

Claim (Index 1):
A method for processing a substrate to deposit a material layer over the substrate, comprising,\n providing a plasma chamber having a substrate support electrode for supporting the substrate and a showerhead electrode arranged over the substrate support electrode; receiving a recipe for depositing the material layer over the substrate; identifying a first gap between the substrate support electrode and the showerhead electrode, the first gap being associated with a first uniformity profile; identifying a second gap between the substrate support electrode and the showerhead electrode, the second gap being associated with a second uniformity profile; depositing a first film of the material layer while the plasma chamber is set to have the first gap; and depositing a second film of the material layer while the plasma chamber is set to have the second gap; wherein the first uniformity profile is configured to have positive non-uniform characteristics and the second uniformity profile is configured to have negative non-uniform characteristics, wherein the positive and negative non-uniform characteristics act to cancel each other to improve a global uniformity of the deposited material layer across a surface of the substrate.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 38.0
- Percentile: 86.0
- Lexical Diversity: 3.27778
- Patent Class: 427.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['14701479', '15683397', '14074596', '15287176', '10316987']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.762936844656022
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5543261098162515
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7420757711720449
- Mean Citation Score: 257.036926
- Max Citation Score: 400.40836
- Similarity Product: 334.65796285084014

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