US Patent Issued to Sandisk Technologies on July 1 for "Three-dimensional memory device containing variable thickness word lines with reduced length metal nitride diffusion barriers and methods for forming the same" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,347,773, issued on July 1, was assigned to Sandisk Technologies Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.).

"Three-dimensional memory device containing variable thickness word lines with reduced length metal nitride diffusion barriers and methods for forming the same" was invented by Rahul Sharangpani (Fremont, Calif.), Raghuveer S. Makala (Campbell, Calif.) and Fei Zhou (San Jose, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A semiconductor structure includes an alternating stack of insulating layers and electrically conductive layers, memory openings vertically extending through the alternating stack, memory opening fill structures located in the memory openings...