US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on Sept. 23 for "Soft ashing process for forming protective layer on conductive cap layer of semiconductor device" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,424,444, issued on Sept. 23, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Soft ashing process for forming protective layer on conductive cap layer of semiconductor device" was invented by Guan-Xuan Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Sheng-Liang Pan (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chia-Yang Hung (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Po-Chuan Wang (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Huan-Just Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for making a semiconductor device includes patterning at least one dielectric layer disposed over a conductive cap layer to form a via opening penetrating through the at least one dielectric layer to expose ...