PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15976793
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-05
Publication Date: 2018-09
Patent Classification: ["438", "694000"]

Abstract:
Disclosed herein are methods of doping a fin-shaped channel region of a partially fabricated 3-D transistor on a semiconductor substrate. The methods may include forming a multi-layer dopant-containing film on the substrate, forming a capping film comprising a silicon carbide material, a silicon nitride material, a silicon carbonitride material, or a combination thereof, the capping film located such that the multi-layer dopant-containing film is located in between the substrate and the capping film, and driving dopant from the dopant-containing film into the fin-shaped channel region. Multiple dopant-containing layers of the film may be formed by an atomic layer deposition process which includes adsorbing a dopant-containing film precursor such that it forms an adsorption-limited layer on the substrate and reacting adsorbed dopant-containing film precursor. Also disclosed herein are multi-station substrate processing apparatuses for doping the fin-shaped channel regions of partially fabricated 3-D transistors.

Claim (Index 31):
A multi-station substrate processing apparatus for doping the fin-shaped channel regions of partially fabricated 3-D transistors on the surfaces of multiple semiconductor substrates at multiple process stations, the apparatus comprising:\n a plurality of process stations contained in one or more processing chambers, each process station having a substrate holder; one or more valves for controlling flow of dopant-containing film precursor to the process stations; one or more valve-operated vacuum sources for removing dopant-containing film precursor from the volumes surrounding the process stations contained in the one or more processing chambers; and one or more controllers comprising machine-readable instructions for operating the one or more valves and one or more vacuum sources to dope the fin-shaped channel regions on the surfaces of the substrates, including instructions for:\n (a) forming a dopant-containing film on a substrate at a process station contained in a processing chamber, wherein multiple dopant-containing layers of the film are formed by an atomic layer deposition process comprising:\n (i) introducing a dopant-containing film precursor into the processing chamber containing the process station having the substrate holder holding the substrate, and allowing the precursor to adsorb onto the surface of the substrate such that the precursor forms an adsorption-limited layer on the substrate; \n (ii) removing unadsorbed dopant-containing film precursor from the volume surrounding the adsorbed precursor; \n (iii) reacting adsorbed dopant-containing film precursor, after removing unadsorbed precursor in (ii), to form a dopant-containing layer on the substrate; \n (iv) removing desorbed dopant-containing film precursor and/or reaction by-product from the volume surrounding the dopant-containing layer when present after reacting the adsorbed precursor; and \n (v) repeating (i) through (iv) to form multiple dopant-containing layers of the dopant-containing film; \n \n (b) forming a capping film comprising a silicon carbide material, a silicon nitride material, a silicon carbonitride material, or a combination thereof, the capping film located such that the dopant-containing film formed in (a) is in between the substrate and the capping film; and \n (c) driving dopant from the dopant-containing film into a fin-shaped channel region.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 56.0
- Percentile: 93.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.02667
- Patent Class: 438.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['14194549', '13607386', '13224240', '14133239', '13242084']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8463185547807979
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5404076013882385
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.815727459441542
- Mean Citation Score: 254.058318
- Max Citation Score: 392.55725
- Similarity Product: 288.3842111287862

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