Patent 7667944 was granted and assigned to Praxair on February, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The present invention discloses an electrostatic chuck for clamping work substrates, said chuck comprising three layers, where the dielectric constant of included non-conductive layers is selected to provide overall lower capacitance to the chuck. In the chuck assembly of the present invention, the top dielectric layer that is in contact with a substrate, such as, a wafer, has a dielectric constant that is preferably greater than about 5, with a resistivity that is preferably greater than about 1E6 ohm.m, whereas the bottom dielectric layer has a dielectric constant that is preferably less than about 5 and a resistivity that is preferably greater than about 1E10 ohm.m. The intermediate layer preferably has a conductive layer where the resistivity is less than about 1 ohm.m.