US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on Dec. 30 for "Heater lift assembly spring damper" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,512,338, issued on Dec. 30, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Heater lift assembly spring damper" was invented by Kai-Wen Wu (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chun-Ta Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chin-Shen Hsieh (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Cheng-Yi Huang (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In an embodiment, an apparatus comprising: a heater configured to heat a wafer located on a wafer staging area of the heater, the heater comprising a heater shaft extending below the wafer staging area; and a heater lift assembly comprising: a lift shaft configured to move the heater shaft in a vertical direction; a clam...