US Patent Issued to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing on July 14 for "Selective High-K formation in gate-last process" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 14 -- United States Patent no. 12,684,848, issued on July 14, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Selective High-K formation in gate-last process" was invented by Yasutoshi Okuno (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Fu-Ting Yen (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Teng-Chun Tsai (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Ziwei Fang (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes removing a dummy gate stack to form an opening between gate spacers, selectively forming an inhibitor film on sidewalls of the gate spacers, with the sidewalls of the gate spacers facing the opening, and selectively forming a dielectric layer over a surface of a semiconductor region. The inh...