Applied Materials Assigned Patent

Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, CA, has been assigned a patent (10,886,172) developed by Chen, Yihong, Duan, Ziqing, San Jose, CA, Mallick, Abhijit Basu, Palo Alto, CA, and Chan, Kelvin, San Ramon, CA , for “methods for wordline separation in 3D-NAND devices.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Methods of wordline separation in semiconductor devices (e.g., 3D-NAND) are described. A metal film is deposited in the wordlines and on the surface of a stack of spaced oxide layers. The metal film is removed by high temperature oxidation and etching of the oxide or low temperature atomic layer etching by oxidizing the surface and etching the oxide in a monolayer fashion. After removal of the metal overburden, the wordlines are filled with the metal film.”

The patent application was filed on April 14, 2020 (16/848,754).