ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,261,085, issued on March 25, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Semiconductor device with reduced loading effect" was invented by Wei-Lun Chen (Taipei, Taiwan), Li-Te Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Chao-Hsien Huang (Tainan, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present disclosure relates to a method for forming a semiconductor structure includes depositing a dielectric layer on a substrate and depositing a patterning layer on the dielectric layer. The method also includes performing a first etching process on the patterning layer to form a first region including a first plurality of blocks at ...