ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 24 -- United States Patent no. 12,588,447, issued on March 24, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).
"Etching method and plasma processing apparatus" was invented by Takayuki Katsunuma (Miyagi, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An etching method includes: (a) providing a substrate including an etching target film and a mask on the etching target film; (b) after (a), forming a metal-containing deposit on the mask by a first plasma generated from a first processing gas including a metal-containing gas and a hydrogen-containing gas; (c) after (b), deforming or modifying the metal-containing deposit by a second plasma generated from a second processing gas differe...