ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,471,357, issued on Nov. 11, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Semiconductor device and method" was invented by Ching-Feng Fu (Taichung, Taiwan), Yu-Lien Huang (Jhubei, Taiwan), Tsai-Jung Ho (Xihu Township, Taiwan) and Huan-Just Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes forming a first inter-layer dielectric (ILD) layer over source and drain regions of a semiconductor structure; forming a first mask material over the first ILD layer; etching first openings in the first mask material; filling the first openings with a fill material; etching second openings in the fil...