US Patent Issued to Lam Research on April 7 for "Atomic layer etching of molybdenum" (California, Oregon, Hawaii Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,598,929, issued on April 7, was assigned to Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, Calif.).

"Atomic layer etching of molybdenum" was invented by Andreas Fischer (Castro Valley, Calif.), Aaron Lynn Routzahn (Fremont, Calif.), Thorsten Bernd Lill (Kalaheo, Hawaii) and Seshasayee Varadarajan (Lake Oswego, Ore.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Molybdenum is etched in a highly controllable manner by performing one or more etch cycles, where each cycle involves exposing the substrate having a molybdenum layer to an oxygen-containing reactant to form molybdenum oxide followed by treatment with boron trichloride to convert molybdenum oxide to a volatile mol...