US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on July 21 for "Methods of selectively etching silicon nitride" (Singaporean, American Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,690,404, issued on July 21, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Methods of selectively etching silicon nitride" was invented by Doreen Wei Ying Yong (Singapore), Tuck Foong Koh (Singapore), John Sudijono (Singapore), Mikhail Korolik (San Jose, Calif.), Paul E. Gee (San Jose, Calif.), Thai Cheng Chua (Cupertino, Calif.) and Philip A. Kraus (San Jose, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to selective etching processes. The processes include an etching chemistry (a plasma of a fluorine-containing precursor and a first gas mixture), and a passivating chemistry (a ...