ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,593,665, issued on March 31, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Hard mask removal method" was invented by Che-Hao Tu (Hsinchu, Taiwan), William Weilun Hong (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Ying-Tsung Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of removing a hard mask is provided. Gate stacks are patterned on a substrate, where the gate stacks include a polysilicon layer and the hard mask deposited over the polysilicon layer. A dielectric layer is deposited on the substrate and on the patterned gate stacks. A first portion of the dielectric layer is planarized by chemical mechanical pol...