US Patent Issued to International Business Machines on March 24 for "Memory element with a hardmask stack having different stress levels" (New York Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 24 -- United States Patent no. 12,588,421, issued on March 24, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"Memory element with a hardmask stack having different stress levels" was invented by Oscar van der Straten (Guilderland Center, N.Y.), Lisamarie White (Staatsburg, N.Y.), Willie Lester Muchrison Jr. (Troy, N.Y.), Scott A. DeVries (Albany, N.Y.), Daniel Charles Edelstein (White Plains, N.Y.), Michael Rizzolo (Delmar, N.Y.) and Chih-Chao Yang (Glenmont, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments of the invention are directed to an integrated circuit (IC) structure that includes a memory element a non-sacrificial hardmask stack over the...