US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on July 15 for "Metal gate process and related structure" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,362,238, issued on July 15, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Metal gate process and related structure" was invented by Chih-Lun Lu (New Taipei, Taiwan), Jih-Sheng Yang (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chen-Wei Pan (Hsinchu County, Taiwan) and Chih-Teng Liao (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of forming a semiconductor device includes providing a device having a gate stack with a metal gate layer and a spacer layer disposed on a sidewall of the gate stack. In some embodiments, the method further includes performing an etch-back process to the metal gate layer to form an opening ov...