US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on Feb. 17 for "Low-resistance copper interconnects" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,557,631, issued on Feb. 17, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Low-resistance copper interconnects" was invented by Shu-Cheng Chin (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Chih-Chien Chi (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Chi-Feng Lin (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Implementations of low-resistance copper interconnects and manufacturing techniques for forming the low-resistance copper interconnects described herein may achieve low contact resistance and low sheet resistance by decreasing tantalum nitride (TaN) liner/film thickness (or eliminating the use of tantalum nitride as a copper diffusion barrier) and us...