US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on Sept. 2 for "Air spacers around contact plugs and method forming same" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,408,412, issued on Sept. 2, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Air spacers around contact plugs and method forming same" was invented by Chen-Huang Huang (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Ming-Jhe Sie (Taipei, Taiwan), Yih-Ann Lin (Jhudong Township, Taiwan), An Chyi Wei (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Ryan Chia-Jen Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes forming an opening in a first dielectric layer. A region underlying the first dielectric layer is exposed to the opening. The method further includes depositing a dummy silicon layer extending into the opening, and depositing an isolatio...