US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on July 21 for "Halogen-free etching of silicon nitride" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,690,403, issued on July 21, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Halogen-free etching of silicon nitride" was invented by Zhiren Luo (San Jose, Calif.), Jeong Hwan Kim (San Jose, Calif.), Qian Fu (Pleasanton, Calif.) and Abhijeet S. Bagal (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods of semiconductor processing may include providing a hydrogen-containing precursor to a processing region of a semiconductor processing chamber. A substrate may be disposed on a substrate support within the processing region. A layer of silicon-and-nitrogen-containing material may be disposed on the substrate. The methods...