US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on June 17 for "Dry etcher uniformity control by tuning edge zone plasma sheath" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,334,314, issued on June 17, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Dry etcher uniformity control by tuning edge zone plasma sheath" was invented by Po-Lung Hung (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Yi-Tsang Hsieh (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Yu-Hsi Tang (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chih-Ching Cheng (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Chih-Teng Liao (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A plasma etching system generates a plasma above a wafer in a plasma etching chamber. The wafer is surrounded by a focus ring. The plasma etching system straightens a plasma sheath above the focus ring by generating a supplemental electric field above the f...