US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on July 21 for "Surface depassivation with thermal etch after nitrogen radical treatment" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,690,434, issued on July 21, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Surface depassivation with thermal etch after nitrogen radical treatment" was invented by Dixiong Wang (Milpitas, Calif.), Xi Cen (San Jose, Calif.), Kai Wu (Palo Alto, Calif.), Peiqi Wang (Campbell, Calif.) and Yang Li (Sunnyvale, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of forming a structure on a substrate that includes forming a tungsten nucleation layer within at least one opening within a multi-tier portion of a substrate. The method includes exposing the nucleation layer to a nitrogen-containing gas to inhibit growth of the nucleation ...