ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,341,066, issued on June 24, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).
"Advanced metal interconnect" was invented by Ashim Dutta (Clifton Park, N.Y.), Chih-Chao Yang (Glenmont, N.Y.), Lawrence A. Clevenger (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.) and Ruilong Xie (Niskayuna, N.Y.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A first metal layer is deposited on a substrate. The first metal layer is etched to form one or more metal lines and expose portions of the substrate. A second metal layer is deposited on the exposed portions of the substrate between the one or more metal lines. The first metal layer is patterned to form one or more verti...