US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on May 27 for "Methods of forming 3D NAND structures with decreased pitch" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,317,493, issued on May 27, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Methods of forming 3D NAND structures with decreased pitch" was invented by Thomas Kwon (Dublin, Calif.) and Xinhai Han (Santa Clara, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods of forming 3D NAND devices are discussed. Some embodiments form 3D NAND devices with increased cell density. Some embodiments form 3D NAND devices with decreased vertical and/or later pitch between cells. Some embodiments form 3D NAND devices with smaller CD memory holes. Some embodiments form 3D NAND devices with silicon layer between alternating oxide and nitride materia...