US Patent Issued to Lam Research on May 19 for "Flat bottom shadow ring" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,635,473, issued on May 19, was assigned to Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, Calif.).

"Flat bottom shadow ring" was invented by Lai Wei (Fremont, Calif.), Ji Soo Kim (Pleasanton, Calif.), Alan Jeffrey Miller (Moraga, Calif.), William Thie (Fremont, Calif.), Frank Yun Lin (Fremont, Calif.), Jun Hee Hee Han (San Ramon, Calif.), Jie Liu (Union City, Calif.), Conan Chiang (Cupertino, Calif.) and Michael John Martin (Union City, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In some examples, a flat Bottom Shadow Ring (fBSR) is provided for processing a substrate in a processing chamber. An example fBSR comprises an overhang for covering an edge of the subs...