ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,310,265, issued on May 20, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).
"Dome-shaped phase change memory mushroom cell" was invented by Juntao Li (Cohoes, N.Y.), Kangguo Cheng (Schenectady, N.Y.), Louis Zuoguang Liu (Schenectady, N.Y.) and Arthur Roy Gasasira (Halfmoon, N.Y.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A mushroom memory cell may be formed by depositing a second dielectric layer on top of a first dielectric layer and a heater, depositing a hard mask on top of the second dielectric layer, performing a directional reactive-ion etching to remove an exposed portion of the second dielectric layer, performing a later...