US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on Oct. 14 for "Etch profile control of via opening" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,446,296, issued on Oct. 14, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING Co. LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Etch profile control of via opening" was invented by Te-Chih Hsiung (Taipei, Taiwan), Jyun-De Wu (New Taipei, Taiwan), Peng Wang (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Huan-Just Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A device includes source/drain epitaxial structures over a substrate, source/drain contacts over the source/drain epitaxial structures, respectively, a gate structure laterally between the source/drain contacts, a gate dielectric cap over the gate structure, an oxide-based etch-resistant layer over the gate dielectric cap,...