US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on Oct. 7 for "Interconnect structure and method of forming the same" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,438,041, issued on Oct. 7, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Interconnect structure and method of forming the same" was invented by Wei-Ren Wang (New Taipei, Taiwan), Jen Hung Wang (Zhubei, Taiwan) and Tze-Liang Lee (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A semiconductor device includes a first conductive feature, a first dielectric layer over the first conductive feature, a second conductive feature extending through the first dielectric layer, an air gap between the first dielectric layer and the second conductive feature, and an etch stop layer over the second conductive feature and...