US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on Sept. 9 for "Manufacturing process with atomic level inspection" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,412,787, issued on Sept. 9, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Manufacturing process with atomic level inspection" was invented by I-Che Lee (Taipei, Taiwan) and Huai-Ying Huang (Jhonghe, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Costs may be avoided and yields improved by applying scanning probe microscopy to substrates in the midst of an integrated circuit fabrication process sequence. Scanning probe microscopy may be used to provide conductance data. Conductance data may relate to device characteristics that are normally not available until the conclusion of device manufacturing. The substrate...