US Patent Issued to International Business Machines on Feb. 3 for "Backside direct contact formation" (New York Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,543,544, issued on Feb. 3, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"Backside direct contact formation" was invented by Ruilong Xie (Niskayuna, N.Y.), Kisik Choi (Watervliet, N.Y.), Nicolas Jean Loubet (Guilderland, N.Y.) and Theodorus E. Standaert (Clifton Park, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A semiconductor device is provided. The semiconductor device includes source/drain (S/D) epitaxy, a gate stack adjacent to the S/D epitaxy, a semiconductor layer underlying the gate stack and including a semiconductor material surrounded by an inner spacer, an etch stop layer underlying the semiconductor layer, back...