ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,706,286, issued on Aug. 11, was assigned to HITACHI HIGH-TECH Corp. (Tokyo).
"Plasma processing method and plasma processing apparatus" was invented by Soichiro Eto (Tokyo), Shigeru Nakamoto (Tokyo) and Kosuke Fukuchi (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A plasma processing method apparatus for accurately estimating the amount of lateral etching and determining an end point based on the estimated amount of etching, including: a first step of irradiating the wafer with light; a second step of receiving light reflected from the wafer at a plurality of predetermined times during the plasma process on the wafer; a third step of performing s...