US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on April 21 for "Metal etching with reduced tilt angle" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,610,761, issued on April 21, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Metal etching with reduced tilt angle" was invented by Chao-Hsuan Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan), I-Wei Yang (Yilan, Taiwan), Chang-Han Tsai (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Shu-Uei Jang (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Shu-Yuan Ku (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Yih-Ann Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Ryan Chia-Jen Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods for etching metal, such as for processing a metal gate, are provided. A method includes forming a hard mask over the metal, wherein the hard mask includes a sidewall defining an opening; and performing a pla...