US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on March 4 for "Protection structures for bonded wafers" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,243,772, issued on March 4, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Protection structures for bonded wafers" was invented by Ssu-Chiang Weng (New Taipei, Taiwan), Ping-Hao Lin (Tainan, Taiwan) and Fu-Cheng Chang (Tainan, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes bonding a first wafer to a second wafer. The first wafer includes a plurality of dielectric layers, a metal pipe penetrating through the plurality of dielectric layers, and a dielectric region encircled by the metal pipe. The dielectric region has a plurality of steps formed of sidewalls and top surfaces of portions of the plu...