US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on Jan. 27 for "Photoresist top coating material for etching rate control" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,535,738, issued on Jan. 27, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Photoresist top coating material for etching rate control" was invented by Tzu-Yang Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Ching-Yu Chang (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Chin-Hsiang Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A patterning stack is provided. The patterning stack includes a bottom anti-reflective coating (BARC) layer over a substrate, a photoresist layer having a first etching resistance over the BARC layer, and a top coating layer having a second etching resistance greater than the first etching resistance over the photoresist layer....