US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on May 20 for "Spacer scheme and method for MRAM" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,310,257, issued on May 20, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Spacer scheme and method for MRAM" was invented by Joung-Wei Liou (Zhudong Township, Taiwan) and Chin Kun Lan (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An MRAM cell has a bottom electrode, a metal tunneling junction, and a top electrode. The metal tunneling junction has a side surface between the bottom electrode and the top electrode. A thin layer on the side surface includes one or more compounds of a metal found in one of the electrodes. The thin layer has a lower conductance than the MTJ. The electrode metal may have been ...