US Patent Issued to International Business Machines on March 4 for "Hard mask removal without damaging top epitaxial layer" (New York, Wisconsin Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,243,770, issued on March 4, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"Hard mask removal without damaging top epitaxial layer" was invented by Chanro Park (Clifton Park, N.Y.), Yann Mignot (Slingerlands, N.Y.), Daniel J. Vincent (Madison, Wis.), Su Chen Fan (Cohoes, N.Y.), Christopher J. Waskiewicz (Rexford, N.Y.) and Hsueh-Chung Chen (Cohoes, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments disclosed herein describe methods of forming semiconductor devices. The methods may include etching vias and trenches in a middle-of-line (MOL) layer that has a low-k dielectric layer, a sacrificial nitride layer, and a har...