US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on Dec. 16 for "Hard mask for MTJ patterning" (Taiwanese Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,501,625, issued on Dec. 16, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Hard mask for MTJ patterning" was invented by Chern-Yow Hsu (Chu-Bei, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present disclosure relates to a method of forming an integrated chip. The method includes forming a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) stack over a bottom electrode layer. A sacrificial dielectric is formed over the MTJ stack. The sacrificial dielectric is patterned to form a cavity. A top electrode material is formed within the cavity and a mask is formed over the top electrode material. The top electrode material extends fr...