ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,336,440, issued on June 17, was assigned to STMicroelectronics (Crolles 2) SAS (Crolles, France).
"Phase change memory" was invented by Pascal Gouraud (St Martin, France) and Laurent Favennec (Villard Bonnot, France).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A memory cell is manufactured by: (a) forming a stack comprising a first layer made of a phase change material and a second layer made of a conductive material; (b) forming a mask on the stack covering only the memory cell location; and (c) etching portions of the stack not covered by the first mask. The formation of the mask covering only the memory cell location comprises defining a first mask...