US Patent Issued to QUALCOMM on June 23 for "Field-effect transistors (FETs) employing thermal expansion of work function metal layers for strain effect and related fabrication methods" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,666,650, issued on June 23, was assigned to QUALCOMM Inc. (San Diego).

"Field-effect transistors (FETs) employing thermal expansion of work function metal layers for strain effect and related fabrication methods" was invented by Xia Li (San Diego), Bin Yang (San Diego) and Jun Yuan (San Diego).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Forces applied to the channel regions of semiconductor slabs in a first direction relative to the semiconductor slab, can create strains in the crystal structure that improve carrier mobility to improve drive strength in the channel region. In a three-dimensional (3D) FET structure, a work function metal layer is provi...