US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on June 23 for "Method of manufacturing a semiconductor device" (Taiwanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,666,677, issued on June 23, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Method of manufacturing a semiconductor device" was invented by Ming-Wen Hsiao (Kaohsiung City, Taiwan), Chun-Yen Tai (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Yen-Hsin Liu (New Taipei City, Taiwan), Ming-Jhih Kuo (Zhubei City, Taiwan) and Ming-Feng Shieh (Yongkang City, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device, underlying structures comprising gate electrodes and source/drain epitaxial layers are formed, one or more layers are formed over the underlying structures, a hard mask layer is formed over the...