Etch Endpoint Detection Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
- 65.9% concentration. The top 5 assignees alone account for 507 of the 769 records in scope, leaving a long tail of single- and low-filing entrants behind them.
- Filing has cooled, not collapsed. Filings ran 30 in 2021 down to 25 in 2024, a -17% shift over that span, while 2025-2026 counts are still filling in under publication lag.
- H01L and H10P dominate the claim map. Semiconductor device claims (32.8%) and H10P (23.1%) sit ahead of optical/electron-tube instrumentation (H01J, 22.8%) and material analysis (G01N, 22.4%).
Filing growth compares 2021 (30 records) with 2024 (25) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 769 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Etch endpoint detection and chamber matching sit at the intersection of process control and semiconductor manufacturing: methods for knowing precisely when an etch step is finished, and for keeping multiple process chambers behaving identically over time. The search spans optical emission spectroscopy, interferometric endpoint methods, drift compensation and chamber seasoning, and run-to-run fault detection and classification — the instrumentation and the control-loop software layered on top of it.
The 769 records in scope run from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, drawing filings from equipment makers, sensor specialists and the fabs that consume their output. Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years understate real filing activity.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 769-record dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings climbed from 38 in 2017 to a peak of 117 in 2025, though 2025 and 2026 figures will keep rising as more publications clear the 18-month lag. The last complete year-over-year comparison available, 2021 to 2024, shows a -17% move (30 to 25) — a cooling rather than a collapse.
IPC subclass composition
H01L (semiconductor devices) leads at 32.8% of the 769 records, followed by H10P at 23.1%, H01J (electron and discharge tubes, the OES sensor hardware) at 22.8%, and G01N (material analysis and testing) at 22.4%. Software-side control appears further down: G06F at 18.1% and G05B (control and regulating systems) at 8.6%. Records commonly carry more than one class, so these shares sum past 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 769 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Etch Endpoint Detection and Chamber Matching with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about etch endpoint detection and chamber matching and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative claim in this space
Optical Emission Spectroscopy for Advanced Process Characterization
A method of characterizing a plasma in a plasma processing system that includes generating a pulsed plasma powered with a pulsed power signal, each pulse comprising an overshoot period, a stable-ON period and a decay period; performing cyclic optical emission spectroscopy measurements across more than one pulse during one of those periods; and deriving a plasma characteristic for that period from the first OES data alone.Filed by Tokyo Electron, published as US20240094056A1.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20100032587A1 | Electron beam exciter for use in chemical analysis in processing systems | 514 |
| 2 | US6952656B1 | Wafer fabrication data acquisition and management systems | 479 |
| 3 | US20190264324A1 | Apparatus for detecting or monitoring for a chemical precursor in a high temperature environment | 391 |
| 4 | US5864773A | Virtual sensor based monitoring and fault detection/classification system and method for semiconductor proces… | 275 |
| 5 | US20060184264A1 | Fault detection and classification (FDC) using a run-to-run controller | 245 |
| 6 | US20070238199A1 | Method for conditioning a process chamber | 237 |
| 7 | US20090055126A1 | Virtual sensors | 227 |
| 8 | US20100081285A1 | Apparatus and Method for Improving Photoresist Properties | 181 |
| 9 | US20140062303A1 | Systems and methods for calibrating a switched mode ion energy distribution system | 154 |
| 10 | US20070039548A1 | Optical emission interferometry for PECVD using a gas injection hole | 148 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence, not of current importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three findings that shape where a new filing is likely to land clean, and where it walks into dense prior art.
The field is top-heavy
Five assignees hold 507 of the 769 records in scope, and the top ten extend that to 79.5% (611 records). New entrants are filing into a space where the core sensing and control claims are already staked out by a small group of equipment and instrumentation makers.
Sensor hardware is more claimed than the control loop
H01J (electron and discharge tube hardware, 22.8% of records) and G01N (material analysis, 22.4%) are more heavily claimed than G05B control and regulating systems at 8.6%. The algorithmic layer that turns sensor signal into a chamber-matching or fault-detection decision looks comparatively open.
Growth has cooled from its earlier pace
Filings moved from 30 in 2021 to 25 in 2024, a -17% shift over that span — the last window not distorted by publication lag. 2025's count of 117 total filings and the near-zero 2026 figure reflect the corpus still filling in, not a sudden drop-off.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to etch endpoint detection and chamber matching, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee landscape and collaboration patterns
The ranked leaders are equipment makers and instrumentation specialists, with fabs and sensor vendors filing jointly on a handful of dense co-assignee pairs.
A single leader well ahead of the field
The top-ranked assignee holds 158 records against a fifth-place figure of 46 and a tenth-place figure of 17 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-and-long-tail field rather than an evenly split one.
Co-filing concentrates around the leader
Of 10 identified co-assignee pairs, the strongest links individual inventors to the leading assignee at 17 shared records each, with a further pairing to a major IT/systems firm at 14 — evidence of in-house engineering collaboration rather than broad industry cross-filing.
Momentum figures reflect publication lag, not exit
Every one of the most active assignees shows 0 filings and -100% year-over-year in the latest year. Given the 18-month publication lag, this reads as an artefact of the data cut-off rather than these firms stepping back from the technology.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo Electron Ltd | 0 | -100% |
| Applied Materials Inc | 0 | -100% |
| SILVEBROOK KIA | 0 | -100% |
| Lam Research Corp | 0 | -100% |
| Verity Instruments Inc | 0 | -100% |
| Advanced Energy Industries Inc | 0 | -100% |
| Heraeus Electro-Nite International NV | 0 | — |
| Sony Group Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific questions worth running deeper before committing a filing strategy or a freedom-to-operate review.
Map the control-software gap
G05B and G06F claims trail the hardware classes by a wide margin. Before assuming that gap is open, run a focused search on run-to-run and drift-compensation algorithm claims specifically, since general IPC shares can mask dense sub-clusters.
Explore in Eureka →Track the leader's recent filings directly
Aggregate momentum figures are distorted by publication lag in the last one to two years. Pull the leading assignee's filing history directly rather than relying on the trailing-year percentage change.
Explore in Eureka →Check citation leaders for design-around risk
The most-cited records skew toward older filings by construction. Before treating them as blocking art, confirm current legal status and claim scope rather than citation count alone.
Explore in Eureka →Common questions on this landscape
The assignee ranking, covering 100 companies across 769 records, shows one leader well ahead of the rest at 158 records, with fifth place at 46 and tenth place at 17. This is a leader-and-long-tail structure rather than an even split: the top 5 assignees combined hold 65.9% of all records in scope, and the top 10 hold 79.5%. Equipment and instrumentation makers dominate the upper ranks, with fabs and individual inventors appearing further down through co-filed records.
Filings moved from 30 in 2021 to 25 in 2024, a -17% change over that span, which is the most recent comparison not distorted by publication lag. The raw yearly counts show a peak of 117 in 2025, but because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as a real-time picture. The honest read is a field that cooled somewhat through the early 2020s rather than one that collapsed.
H01L (semiconductor devices) covers 32.8% of the 769 records, the largest single class, followed by H10P at 23.1% and H01J (electron and discharge tube hardware, largely OES sensor components) at 22.8%. Material analysis and testing under G01N sits close behind at 22.4%. Software-side classes like G06F (18.1%) and G05B control systems (8.6%) are less densely claimed, which is worth noting since records can carry multiple classes and these percentages sum past 100%.
This Tokyo Electron filing, published 2024-03-21, claims a method of characterising a pulsed plasma using cyclic optical emission spectroscopy measurements taken during specific phases of the pulse cycle — an overshoot period, a stable-ON period and a decay period. It derives a plasma characteristic for one of those periods using only the OES data gathered during that period across multiple pulses. Anyone building pulsed-plasma OES characterisation that isolates measurement to a single pulse phase should review this claim scope closely before finalising a design.
The clearest gap sits in the control-software layer rather than the sensing hardware: G05B control and regulating claims (8.6% of records) trail well behind H01J instrumentation claims (22.8%) and G01N material analysis (22.4%). Sub-areas like run-to-run algorithmic tuning, chamber seasoning drift models and cross-chamber fault classification software show thinner filing density relative to the hardware side. That does not guarantee freedom to operate, but it does mark where new claims are less likely to run into the dense prior art that surrounds the core optical and electron-tube sensing hardware.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.