US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on April 1 for "Semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and method thereof" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,265,327, issued on April 1, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING Co. LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and method thereof" was invented by Ching-Hai Yang (Taipei, Taiwan) and Yao-Hwan Kao (Hsinchu County, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method, comprising forming a material layer over a substrate; illuminating at least one region of the material layer with a light; recording strength of the light reflected from the at least one region; and determining a thickness of the material layer in the at least one region according to the strength of the light."

The patent was filed on July 16, 20...