US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on Jan. 20 for "Scalable patterning through layer expansion process and resulting structures" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,532,723, issued on Jan. 20, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Scalable patterning through layer expansion process and resulting structures" was invented by Kai-Hsuan Lee (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Sai-Hooi Yeong (Zhubei, Taiwan) and Chi On Chui (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Small sized and closely pitched features can be formed by patterning a layer to have holes therein and then expanding the layer so that the holes shrink. If the expansion is sufficient to pinch off the respective holes, multiple holes can be formed from one larger hole. Holes smaller and of closer pitch than prac...