ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,707,937, issued on Aug. 11, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Wafer release mechanism" was invented by Yan-Hong Liu (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Che-fu Chen (Taipei, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present disclosure describes a method that prevents pre-mature dc-chucking in processing modules. The method includes placing a wafer onto a chuck equipped with lift pins. One or more of the lift pins include a pressure sensor configured to measure a pressure exerted by the wafer. The method further includes measuring a first pressure applied to the one or more lift pins by the wafer, lowering t...