ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,363,908, issued on July 15, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Semiconductor memory devices with varying channel width and methods of manufacturing thereof" was invented by Peng-Chun Liou (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Zhiqiang Wu (Chubei, Taiwan), Ya-Yun Cheng (Taichung, Taiwan), Yi-Ching Liu (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Meng-Han Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A semiconductor device includes a first conductive structure extending along a vertical direction and a second conductive structure extending along the vertical direction. The second conductive structure is spaced apart from the first...