US Patent Issued to SK hynix on Aug. 5 for "Methods of forming patterns using hard mask" (South Korean Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,381,080, issued on Aug. 5, was assigned to SK hynix Inc. (Icheon, South Korea).

"Methods of forming patterns using hard mask" was invented by Joo Hwan Park (Icheon, South Korea), Joon Gi Kwon (Icheon, South Korea) and Myung Ok Kim (Icheon, South Korea).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of forming patterns includes: forming a hard mask layer on a target layer, coating a cleavage relief layer on the hard mask layer to fill cleavages generated in the hard mask layer, forming photoresist patterns on the cleavage relief layer, removing portions of the cleavage relief layer and portions of the hard mask layer using the photoresist patterns...