US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on Feb. 4 for "Passivation structure with planar top surfaces" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,218,022, issued on Feb. 4, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING Co. LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Passivation structure with planar top surfaces" was invented by Yi-Hsiu Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Wen-Chih Chiou (Zhunan Township, Taiwan) and Chen-Hua Yu (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes forming a first passivation layer, forming a metal pad over the first passivation layer, forming a planarization layer having a planar top surface over the metal pad, and patterning the planarization layer to form a first opening. A top surface of the metal pad is revealed through the first opening. The method further ...