US Patent Issued to International Business Machines on Feb. 24 for "Magnetic tunnel junction pillar formation for MRAM device" (New York Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 24 -- United States Patent no. 12,563,972, issued on Feb. 24, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"Magnetic tunnel junction pillar formation for MRAM device" was invented by Heng Wu (Guilderland, N.Y.), Pouya Hashemi (Purchase, N.Y.), Ruilong Xie (Niskayuna, N.Y.) and Julien Frougier (Albany, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of manufacturing an MRAM device includes forming an MTJ stack on a substrate, forming a hardmask layer on the MTJ stack, forming etch pattern pads on the hardmask, forming a spacer on the sides of the etch pattern pads to form first openings exposing the hardmask, patterning the MTJ stack by a first etch ...