US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on Dec. 30 for "Forming interconnect structures in semiconductor devices" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,512,363, issued on Dec. 30, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Forming interconnect structures in semiconductor devices" was invented by Hsiu-Wen Hsueh (Taichung, Taiwan), Cai-Ling Wu (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chii-Ping Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Chien-Chih Chiu (Tainan County, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes forming a first conductive feature over a substrate, forming an etch-stop layer (ESL) stack over the first conductive feature, forming a first interlayer dielectric (ILD) layer over the ESL stack, forming a patterned ESL having a first opening over the first ILD layer...