ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,438,006, issued on Oct. 7, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).
"Metal hard mask integration" was invented by Angelique Raley (Albany, N.Y.), Hirokazu Aizawa (Albany, N.Y.), Kaoru Maekawa (Albany, N.Y.), Katie Lutker-Lee (Albany, N.Y.) and Gerrit Leusink (Albany, N.Y.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of processing a substrate that includes: etching a recess in the substrate using a metal hard mask (MHM) layer as an etch mask, the substrate including a dielectric layer over a conductive layer the includes a first conductive material, a portion of the MHM layer remaining over top surfaces of the dielectric layer after the etc...