US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on Feb. 10 for "Direct word line contact and methods of manufacture for 3D memory" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,550,317, issued on Feb. 10, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Direct word line contact and methods of manufacture for 3D memory" was invented by Chang Seok Kang (Santa Clara, Calif.), Tomohiko Kitajima (San Jose, Calif.), Sung-Kwan Kang (Santa Clara, Calif.) and Gill Yong Lee (San Jose, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Described are memory devices having an array region and an extension region adjacent the array region. The array region includes at least two unit cells stacked vertically. The extension region includes a memory stack and a plurality of word line contacts. The memory stack comprises altern...