ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,362,239, issued on July 15, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Self aligned contact scheme" was invented by Yu-Lien Huang (Jhubei, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes using a second hard mask layer over a gate stack to protect the gate electrode during etching a self-aligned contact. The second hard mask is formed over a first hard mask layer, where the first hard mask layer has a lower etch selectivity than the second hard mask layer."
The patent was filed on April 8, 2024, under Application No. 18/629,384.
*For further information, including images, charts and tables, p...