ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,308,233, issued on May 20, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Dual critical dimension patterning" was invented by Kuo-Chang Kau (Yuanli Township, Taiwan), Wen-Yun Wang (Taipei, Taiwan), Chia-Chu Liu (Shin-Chu, Taiwan) and Hua-Tai Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A patterning process is performed on a semiconductor wafer coated with a bottom layer, a middle layer and a photoresist layer having a starting thickness. The patterning process includes: performing an exposure step including exposing the semiconductor wafer using a mask that includes a feature which produces an ...