US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on Dec. 30 for "Method for selectively forming hard mask" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,512,318, issued on Dec. 30, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING Co. LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Method for selectively forming hard mask" was invented by Chia-Wei Su (Taoyuan, Taiwan), Fu-Ting Yen (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Teng-Chun Tsai (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes forming a metal layer over a substrate; forming a dielectric layer over the metal layer; performing a plasma treatment to a first portion of the dielectric layer, such that a carbon concentration of the first portion of the dielectric layer is lower than a carbon concentration of a second portion of the dielectric layer; selectivel...