US Patent Issued to Shanghai Huali Microelectronics on July 1 for "Method for making active area air gap" (Chinese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,349,343, issued on July 1, was assigned to Shanghai Huali Microelectronics Corp. (China).

"Method for making active area air gap" was invented by Shaokang Yao (Shanghai), Qiwei Wang (Shanghai) and Haoyu Chen (Shanghai).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present application discloses a method for making an active area air gap, comprising: step 1, performing word line etching to form a plurality of word line structures on a semiconductor substrate, wherein each word line structure spans each field oxide and each active area; step 2, forming a protective spacer on a side surface of the word line structure in a self-aligned manner; step 3, etc...