US Patent Issued to International Business Machines on Dec. 2 for "Magnesium oxide based hardmask for reactive ion etching" (American, German Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,488,994, issued on Dec. 2, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"Magnesium oxide based hardmask for reactive ion etching" was invented by Aakash Pushp (San Jose, Calif.), M A Mueed (San Jose, Calif.), Benjamin Madon (Cupertino, Calif.), Noel Arellano (Gilroy, Calif.), Krystelle Lionti (San Jose, Calif.), Gregory Michael Wallraff (San Jose, Calif.), Anthony Bock Fong (San Jose, Calif.), Brian Peter Hughes (San Jose, Calif.) and Vincent Ouazan-Reboul (Gottingen, Germany).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Forming a hardmask layer for reactive ion etching includes depositing a hardmask above an underlayer. The har...