ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,283,616, issued on April 22, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING Co. LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"FinFET having a work function material gradient" was invented by Peng-Soon Lim (Johor, Malaysia), Zi-Wei Fang (Hsinchu County, Taiwan) and Cheng-Ming Lin (Kaohsiung, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes forming a semiconductor fin; forming a gate dielectric layer over the semiconductor fin; depositing a first work function metal layer over the gate dielectric layer, the first work function metal layer having a first concentration of a work function material; depositing a second work function metal layer over the ...