ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,438,039, issued on Oct. 7, was assigned to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).
"Air gap in beol interconnect" was invented by Ashim Dutta (Clifton Park, N.Y.), Son Nguyen (Schenectady, N.Y.), Matthew T. Shoudy (Guilderland, N.Y.) and Chih-Chao Yang (Glenmont, N.Y.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A first BEOL layer, including a first and a second signal line, a conformal dielectric surrounding an upper portion of a vertical sidewall of each of the first signal line and the second signal line, an air gap between the first and the second signal line, a vertical side boundary of the air gap is a vertical side surface of the f...