ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 25 -- United States Patent no. 12,484,276, issued on Nov. 25, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Replacement structures" was invented by Kuei-Yu Kao (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Shih-Yao Lin (Taipei, Taiwan), Chen-Ping Chen (Yilan, Taiwan), Chih-Chung Chiu (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chih-Han Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Ming-Ching Chang (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Chao-Cheng Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Provided are devices with replacement structures and methods for fabricating such structures. A method includes forming a layer over a semiconductor material having a top surface in a horizontal plane; forming a dummy structure o...