US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on Sept. 9 for "Atom probe tomography specimen preparation" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,412,729, issued on Sept. 9, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Atom probe tomography specimen preparation" was invented by Shih-Wei Hung (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Jang Jung Lee (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The disclosure is directed to techniques in preparing an atom probe tomography ("APT") specimen. The disclosed techniques form an APT specimen or sample directly on a DUT region on a wafer. The APT specimen is formed integrally to the substrate or the support structure, e.g., a carrier, under the APT specimen. A laser patterning is conducted to form a trench in the DUT and on...