ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,426,519, issued on Sept. 23, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Memory devices" was invented by Hung-Li Chiang (Taipei, Taiwan), Jer-Fu Wang (Taipei, Taiwan), Chao-Ching Cheng (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Tzu-Chiang Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of forming a memory device includes the following operations. A first conductive plug is formed within a first dielectric layer over a substrate. A treating process is performed to transform a portion of the first conductive plug into a buffer layer, and the buffer layer caps the remaining portion of the first conductive plug....