US Patent Issued to Intel NDTM US on March 3 for "Selective etch stop for wordline contacts in vertical 3D NAND staircase regions" (Chinese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,568,618, issued on March 3, was assigned to Intel NDTM US LLC (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Selective etch stop for wordline contacts in vertical 3D NAND staircase regions" was invented by Hongpeng Yu (Liaoning, China), Yong Chen (Liaoning, China), Sijia Li (Liaoning, China), Chao Gao (Liaoning, China) and Zhiyuan Yu (Liaoning, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An embodiment of an apparatus may include a substrate, a memory array of vertical 3D NAND strings formed in the substrate, a staircase region formed in the substrate, a polysilicon wordline extended horizontally on a step of the staircase region, a wordline contact extended verticall...