Ion Implantation Patents: Who Leads, Where Filings Are Flat 2026
- Filings have peaked and cooled. Activity crested at 22 families in 2019 and sat at 13 by the 2022 midpoint, a flat-to-declining trend rather than a growth story.
- The US is the dominant filing venue. 290 records route through the USPTO, more than double the next-largest office (WIPO PCT at 123), signalling where enforcement risk concentrates.
- Momentum has stalled across the named leaders. Every major assignee tracked shows zero filings in the latest year, including a -100% YoY drop for one of the largest holders — a sign the field is consolidating around older art rather than expanding.
What the ion implantation patent record shows
Ion implantation and plasma doping sit at the core of junction formation in semiconductor manufacturing, and the patent record for this search — spanning 737 patent families filed between 2015 and 2026 — reflects a mature, well-claimed field rather than an emerging one. Filing activity peaked in 2019 at 22 families and has not returned to that level since, with the 2022 midpoint at 13 confirming a flat-to-declining trajectory. The most-cited records in the corpus date back to the 1990s and early 2000s, underscoring that foundational apparatus and process claims were staked out long before this filing window opens.
Filing destinations skew heavily toward the United States, with the USPTO receiving more than double the filings of the next office, WIPO's PCT track. Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan each receive a meaningful but smaller share, consistent with a technology whose commercial centre of gravity is anchored in US-based equipment makers and their global licensees. Publication lag means the most recent year understates true filing activity; treat the 2025-2026 tail as incomplete rather than as evidence of a sudden stop.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 737-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how those families distribute across the IPC subclasses that define the technology.
A peak-and-plateau filing curve
Annual filings rose to a high of 22 in 2019, then settled near the 2022 midpoint of 13 before tapering toward the incomplete 2026 count. There is no sustained upward trend anywhere in the window — this reads as a field defending established claim positions rather than one absorbing new entrants.
Concentration in core semiconductor and plasma classes
H01L (semiconductor devices) accounts for 593 of the tagged records and H01J (electron and discharge tubes, covering implanters and plasma sources) for 307, with C23C (coating and surface deposition) a distant third at 89. The long tail — H05H plasma accelerators, H10B memory manufacture, H10W — each sits under 20 records, marking those as thin rather than crowded branches of the same technology.
Shares are the percentage of the 737 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Ion Implantation Technology Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about ion implantation technology landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe patents that anchor this field
US6716727B2 — Methods and apparatus for plasma doping and ion implantation in an integrated processing system
Methods and apparatus are provided for plasma doping and ion implantation in an integrated processing system. The apparatus includes a process chamber, a beamline ion implant module for generating an ion beam and directing the ion beam into the process chamber, a plasma doping module including a plasma doping chamber that is accessible from the process chamber, and a wafer positioner. The positioner positions a semiconductor wafer in the path of the ion beam in a beamline implant mode and positions the semiconductor wafer in the plasma doping chamber in a plasma doping mode.Filed by Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates, granted 2004-04-06 — the integrated-chamber architecture this claims around is a recurring reference point across later filings in the corpus.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5436499A | High performance gaas devices and method | 488 |
| 2 | US20050260837A1 | Methods for stable and repeatable ion implantation | 427 |
| 3 | US5595944A | Transistor and process for fabricating the same | 322 |
| 4 | US5646424A | Transistor device employing crystallization catalyst | 306 |
| 5 | US5354381A | Plasma immersion ion implantation (PI3) apparatus | 254 |
| 6 | US5711812A | Apparatus for obtaining dose uniformity in plasma doping (PLAD) ion implantation processes | 199 |
| 7 | US4683645A | Process of fabricating MOS devices having shallow source and drain junctions | 161 |
| 8 | US5561072A | Method for producing shallow junction in surface region of semiconductor substrate using implantation of plas… | 133 |
| 9 | US5913112A | Method of manufacturing an insulated gate field effect semiconductor device having an offset region and/or li… | 129 |
| 10 | US6165876A | Method of doping crystalline silicon film | 125 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus; read them as a signal of influence on subsequent work, not as a ranking of present-day importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-outs from the dataset that matter more for strategy than the raw counts alone.
The growth phase is behind this field
Annual filings crested in 2019 and have not recovered. A field with a declining filing curve and a citation record dominated by 1990s-2000s patents is one where the foundational claim space is largely occupied — new filers are more likely to be defending process tweaks than staking fresh apparatus claims.
Enforcement risk concentrates in the US
The USPTO receives more than double the filings of the next-largest office. For teams assessing freedom to operate, US prosecution history and US-issued claims deserve the first pass; European, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese filings (76, 63, 62, 39 respectively) matter but at materially smaller scale.
The most influential art predates this filing window
The most-cited records — covering GaAs devices, plasma immersion implantation and transistor fabrication — issued well before 2015. They anchor the prior-art landscape that any new filing in this space must clear, even though this dataset's window starts later.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to ion implantation technology landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where it is thin
A small set of equipment makers and foundries account for the bulk of activity, and every one of them shows zero filings in the most recent tracked year — a pattern worth reading as a mature field settling rather than one being actively defended.
Named leaders have gone quiet in the newest year
Varian Semiconductor, Axcelis, Entegris, SEN and Advanced Technology Materials — the core implant-equipment names in the corpus — all show zero filings in the latest tracked year, with one large holder recording a -100% year-on-year drop. This does not mean R&D has stopped; it more likely reflects publication lag plus a maturing claim base.
Inventor-level pairings cluster around one assignee
The strongest co-assignee links in the dataset all involve Varian Semiconductor paired with named individual inventors, at counts of 12, 11 and 9 shared filings. That concentration suggests a stable internal inventing team rather than active cross-company joint filing.
Foundries and materials suppliers sit alongside equipment makers
Names like TSMC, SK Hynix, Applied Materials and Semiconductor Energy Laboratory appear in the assignee set alongside the implant-equipment specialists, reflecting that junction-formation and dopant-activation claims are filed both by toolmakers and by the device manufacturers who use the tools.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates | 0 | — |
| Semiconductor Energy Corporation (SEN) | 0 | — |
| SK Hynix Inc. | 0 | — |
| Applied Materials, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Entegris, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Advanced Technology Materials, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) | 0 | -100% |
| Axcelis Technologies, Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with occupied core claims and a few thinner branches. Two follow-ups make that actionable.
Check freedom to operate against the US filing cluster
With 290 of 737 records routed through the USPTO, any new implant or plasma-doping process should be checked against US-issued claims first, particularly those citing the top-cited apparatus patents identified here.
Run a freedom-to-operate search in EurekaProbe the thin IPC branches before assuming they're closed
H05H, H10B and H10W each carry under 20 tagged records in this corpus. That could mean genuine white space or simply a classification gap — worth a targeted search before committing R&D budget either way.
Explore adjacent IPC classes in EurekaCommon questions about ion implantation patents
The corpus is led by established semiconductor-equipment and device manufacturers rather than new entrants. Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates shows the strongest internal co-filing pattern of any assignee in the dataset, and other recurring names include Axcelis, Entegris, SK Hynix, Applied Materials, TSMC and Semiconductor Energy Laboratory. Notably, every one of these leaders shows zero filings in the most recent tracked year, which is more likely a sign of publication lag and a maturing claim base than of abandoned R&D.
Filing activity is flat to declining. Annual filings peaked at 22 in 2019 and had fallen to 13 by the 2022 midpoint, with no recovery visible afterward. Because publication typically lags actual filing by around eighteen months, the very latest years in any such trend will always look lower than they eventually turn out to be, but the multi-year plateau predates that lag effect and reflects a real slowdown.
The United States is by far the dominant receiving office in this dataset, with 290 records against 123 for the WIPO PCT track and smaller counts for Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. That concentration means US prosecution and prior art matter most for freedom-to-operate purposes, but a PCT filing remains the standard route to preserve options across the Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese markets where meaningful activity also exists.
The IPC distribution shows heavy concentration in H01L (semiconductor devices, 593 records) and H01J (electron and discharge tubes, 307 records), while H05H (plasma and particle accelerators), H10B (memory device manufacture) and H10W each carry fewer than 20 tagged records. These thinner branches — plasma accelerator integration, memory-specific junction implant flows, and dopant activation anneal sequencing — are worth investigating directly before assuming they are simply low-value rather than under-explored.
US6716727B2, assigned to Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates and granted in 2004, claims an integrated processing system combining a beamline ion implant module and a plasma doping module sharing a single process chamber, with a wafer positioner that moves the wafer between the two modes. It matters because it defines an integrated-chamber architecture — rather than separate standalone tools — that later filings in this corpus repeatedly reference or work around. Anyone designing a combined implant/plasma-doping tool should review its claim scope for the chamber-sharing and wafer-positioning elements specifically.
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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.