US Patent Issued to Sandisk Technologies on Aug. 19 for "Semiconductor device having edge seal and method of making thereof without metal hard mask arcing" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,394,668, issued on Aug. 19, was assigned to Sandisk Technologies Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.).

"Semiconductor device having edge seal and method of making thereof without metal hard mask arcing" was invented by Michiaki Sano (Yokkaichi, Japan) and Tatsuya Hinoue (Yokkaichi, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A conductive hard mask layer can be patterned with peripheral discrete openings. An anisotropic etch process can be performed to form peripheral discrete via cavities, which are subsequently expanded to form a continuous moat trench. An edge seal structure can be formed in the continuous moat trench. Alternatively, a conductive bridge s...