US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on April 22 for "Inspection layer to improve the detection of defects through optical systems and methods of inspecting semiconductor device for defects" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,281,991, issued on April 22, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Inspection layer to improve the detection of defects through optical systems and methods of inspecting semiconductor device for defects" was invented by I-Che Lee (Taipei, Taiwan) and Huai-Ying Huang (Jhonghe, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A semiconductor device inspection method including: depositing a dielectric material over a substrate to form an interconnect-level dielectric (ILD) layer; patterning the ILD layer to form via structures in the ILD layer; depositing an electrically conductive material to form an inspectio...