US Patent Issued to Tokyo Electron on Sept. 1 for "Methods for wet atomic layer etching of tungsten using halogenation" (Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 1 -- United States Patent no. 12,727,413, issued on Sept. 1, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Methods for wet atomic layer etching of tungsten using halogenation" was invented by Tulashi Dahal (Austin, Texas) and Kate Abel (Austin, Texas).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Various embodiments of methods are provided for etching tungsten in a wet ALE process. The methods disclosed herein use a wide variety of wet etch chemistries to: (a) halogenate a tungsten surface and form a self-limiting, tungsten halide passivation layer in a surface modification step of the wet ALE process, and (b) selectively remove the tungsten halide passivation layer in a dissolution st...