US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on July 8 for "Air spacer formation for semiconductor devices" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,356,703, issued on July 8, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING Co. LTD. (Hsin-Chu, Taiwan).

"Air spacer formation for semiconductor devices" was invented by Wei-Lun Min (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Chang-Miao Liu (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A dummy gate is formed over a substrate. A sacrificial layer is formed over the dummy gate. An interlayer dielectric (ILD) is formed over the dummy gate and over the sacrificial layer. The dummy gate is replaced with a metal-containing gate. The sacrificial layer is removed. A removal of the sacrificial layer leaves air gaps around the metal-containing gate. The air gaps are...