Florida and California Inventors Patent Plasma Process
According to an article posted on Reed Electronics.com, Kent Rossman of Orlando, Florida, along with Zhong Qiang Hua of Saratoga, California, Zhengquan Tan of Cupertino, California, and Zhuang Li of San Jose, California, has developed a new multistep remote plasma clean process which was originally filed on May 21, 2002 and has now become a registered patent.
The invention relates to a "process for removing unwanted deposition build-up from one or more interior surfaces of a substrate processing chamber after depositing a layer of material over a substrate disposed in the chamber," according to the United States Patent & Trademark Office.
The USPTO also released an abstract stating "in one embodiment, the process comprises transferring the substrate out of the chamber; flowing a first gas into the substrate processing chamber and forming a plasma within the chamber from the first gas in order to heat the chamber; and thereafter, extinguishing the plasma, flowing an etchant gas into a remote plasma source, forming reactive species from the etchant gas and transporting the reactive species into the substrate processing chamber to etch the unwanted deposition build-up."
On January 9, 2007, the inventors were issued U.S. Patent No. 7,159,597. The patent was assigned to Applied Materials, Inc. in Santa Clara California.