Metal Oxide EUV Resist Stochastics Patents: Who Leads 2026
- Three assignees account for all 19 records in scope, with no fourth-place filer visible in the current data — this is a narrow, specialist field, not a crowded one.
- Filing peaked in 2021 at six records and has since flattened toward the 2022 midpoint of one, a pattern consistent with a technology still searching for its production formula rather than scaling.
- G03F photolithography claims cover 84.2% of the 19 records, while C23C coating and deposition claims sit at just 15.8% — the process-integration side of the stack is comparatively open.
Filing growth compares 2021 (6 records) with 2024 (2) — 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.
What this landscape covers
Metal oxide EUV resists trade the chemistry of conventional chemically amplified resists for inorganic, high-absorption formulations intended to resolve the sensitivity-resolution-LER tradeoff that limits extreme ultraviolet lithography at advanced nodes. The stochastic failure modes that matter here — bridging, breaking defects, resist loss, and secondary electron blur — are the reason a resist that prints well in isolated features can still fail at production defect budgets. This search captures patent records claiming those failure modes directly, rather than metal oxide resist chemistry in general.
The scope here is narrow by design: 19 published records across a 2015-2026 window, concentrated among a small set of equipment and foundry players rather than spread across a long tail of chemical suppliers. That concentration is itself informative — it tells a reader this is still a process-integration problem being solved by the companies that own the deposition, exposure and etch tool chain, not yet a broad materials market.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 19-record set: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims sit in. Because a single record can carry more than one IPC class, the composition shares add up to more than 100% of the record total.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Activity rose to a peak of six records in 2021, then fell back toward the 2022 midpoint of one record. Filing has stayed flat or declining since, though the most recent years are understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
IPC subclass composition
G03F (photolithography and photomechanics) covers 84.2% of the 19 records, confirming that claims are overwhelmingly written as lithographic process and patterning steps rather than as standalone material compositions. H01L (semiconductor devices) at 57.9% and H10P at 47.4% show the claims are tied closely to device integration; C23C (coating and surface deposition) at 15.8% and G02B (optics) at 5.3% mark the thinner edges of the claim map.
Shares are the percentage of the 19 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Metal Oxide EUV Resist Stochastics with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about metal oxide euv resist stochastics and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
Substratverarbeitungsverfahren und Substratverarbeitungssystem (Substrate Processing Method and System)
A substrate processing method and system aimed at improving line edge roughness in an underlayer pattern etched using a metal oxide resist film as a mask. The method forms a metal oxide resist film on a substrate, patterns it, modifies the patterned film, and then etches the underlayer using the modified film as the mask.Filed by Tokyo Electron, published 2025-04-23 — illustrates the process-modification route to LER control rather than a new resist chemistry.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20220100088A1 | In-Situ Deposition and Densification Treatment for Metal-Comprising Resist Layer | 6 |
| 2 | US20220390847A1 | Metal oxide resist patterning with electrical field guided post-exposure bake | 3 |
Citation counts are drawn from within this searched corpus and favour older, earlier-published records; treat them as a signal of influence on later filers rather than of current commercial importance.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (2 of 2 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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The dataset is small enough that every figure deserves a direct read rather than a percentage-driven narrative. Three things stand out once the ranking, the trend and the IPC split are read together.
No long tail visible
The ranked leaders account for all 19 records in scope, with a fifth-place filer not present in the data at all. This is not a fragmented emerging field — it is a small set of tool and foundry companies working the same problem, which raises freedom-to-operate stakes for any new entrant.
Flat-to-declining activity
Filing rose to a peak of six records in 2021 and has not returned to that level since, with the 2022 midpoint at just one record. Read this alongside the 18-month publication lag: the truest recent signal is likely still arriving.
Process claims dominate; deposition claims are thin
Photolithographic process claims (G03F) cover the large majority of records, while coating and surface deposition claims (C23C) sit far behind at 15.8%. That gap is where deposition-side process variants remain comparatively unclaimed.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to metal oxide euv resist stochastics, with the prior art for and against each one.
The assignee landscape
Three companies make up the entire ranked assignee list for this topic — there is no fourth or fifth-place filer in the current data. Recent-year momentum across all three sits at zero, consistent with the flat trend seen since the 2021 peak.
Tokyo Electron leads on volume
Tokyo Electron holds the largest share of the ranked assignee list, with claims spanning both lithographic patterning steps and the substrate-modification processes used to control line edge roughness, as reflected in the representative filing.
TSMC files as device integrator
TSMC's presence in the ranking reflects device-integration claims around metal oxide resist use in production flows, rather than resist chemistry itself, consistent with the H01L and H10P weighting seen in the IPC composition.
Applied Materials rounds out the field
Applied Materials' filings sit alongside deposition and etch tool claims, tracking the C23C coating and surface deposition share of the IPC composition rather than the dominant G03F lithography share.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo Electron Limited | 0 | -100% |
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) | 0 | — |
| Applied Materials, Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
A 19-record field this concentrated rewards a targeted freedom-to-operate check over a broad landscape scan. These are the natural next steps.
Map claims against your own process flow
Run the specific deposition, exposure or etch step you plan to use against the ranked leaders' claim language, since the field's process-step framing means overlap is easy to miss at the abstract level.
Explore with Patsnap EurekaWatch for the 2024-2026 publication catch-up
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the flat trend since 2021 may understate real activity in the most recent two years; a re-check once that window clears is worth scheduling.
Set up monitoring in Patsnap EurekaProbe the white space chips directly
The under-claimed sub-areas identified here are starting points for claim drafting, not conclusions — confirm thin coverage with a targeted search before relying on it.
Search white space in Patsnap EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
In this dataset, it means a patent claim tied directly to a named failure mode — bridging, breaking defects, resist loss, thickness budget limits, line edge roughness, sensitivity tradeoffs, secondary electron blur, or defect density — in combination with a metal oxide resist material or process. It excludes general metal oxide resist chemistry claims that do not address a stochastic failure mode. That distinction is why the scope here is 19 records rather than the much larger set covering metal oxide resists broadly.
Three companies make up the entire ranked assignee list for this topic, and together they account for all 19 records in scope. Tokyo Electron holds the largest share at 11 records, with TSMC and Applied Materials filling out the rest of the ranking. There is no visible fourth or fifth-place filer in the current data, which marks this as a specialist field rather than a broadly contested one.
The trend has been flat to declining since a peak of six records in 2021, with the 2022 midpoint down to a single record. That said, publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any trend chart will understate true filing activity until later publications catch up. A renewed uptick would only become visible in the data after that lag clears.
The IPC composition shows photolithographic process claims (G03F) covering 84.2% of the 19 records, while coating and surface deposition claims (C23C) sit at only 15.8%. That gap points to deposition-side process variants — precursor delivery, film densification, and etch selectivity for modified resist masks — as comparatively under-claimed relative to the dominant lithographic process framing. Confirming that gap for a specific claim requires a targeted search rather than relying on the IPC split alone.
No — a small record count reflects a narrow, specialist patent search scope, not commercial insignificance. Metal oxide EUV resists are an active area of semiconductor lithography development, and the 19 records here specifically capture stochastic-defect claims within that broader field. High filing density in an adjacent chemistry search would indicate occupied claim space, not necessarily a more important technology.
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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.