US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on Sept. 16 for "First metal structure, layout, and method" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,417,980, issued on Sept. 16, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"First metal structure, layout, and method" was invented by Chi-Yu Lu (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chih-Liang Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chia-Tien Wu (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chih-Yu Lai (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Shang-Hsuan Chiu (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An integrated circuit (IC) structure includes two active areas extending in a first direction, two gate structures extending in a second direction, a first metal segment extending in the second direction in a first metal layer, second and third metal segments extending in the ...