US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on July 1 for "Reflective mask" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,346,019, issued on July 1, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Reflective mask" was invented by Pei-Cheng Hsu (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Ta-Cheng Lien (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Hsin-Chang Lee (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A reflective mask includes a substrate, a reflective multilayer disposed over the substrate, a capping layer disposed over the reflective multilayer, an intermediate layer disposed over the capping layer, an absorber layer disposed over the intermediate layer, and a cover layer disposed over the absorber layer. The intermediate layer includes a material having a lower...