US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on July 22 for "Lithography mask and methods" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,366,798, issued on July 22, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Lithography mask and methods" was invented by Chien-Cheng Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Huan-Ling Lee (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Ta-Cheng Lien (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chia-Jen Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Hsin-Chang Lee (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A lithography mask including a substrate, a phase shift layer on the substrate and an etch stop layer is provided. The phase shift layer is patterned and the substrate is protected from etching by the etch stop layer. The etch stop layer can be a material that is semi-transmissive to light...