US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on July 29 for "Self-aligned contact air gap formation" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,376,351, issued on July 29, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING Co. LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Self-aligned contact air gap formation" was invented by Kai-Hsuan Lee (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Bo-Yu Lai (Taipei, Taiwan), Sai-Hooi Yeong (Hsinchu County, Taiwan), Feng-Cheng Yang (Hsinchu County, Taiwan), Yih-Ann Lin (Hsinchu County, Taiwan) and Yen-Ming Chen (Hsin-Chu County, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In one example aspect, a method for integrated circuit (IC) fabrication comprises providing a device structure including a substrate, a source/drain (S/D) feature on the substrate, a gate stack on the substrate, a contact hole...