US Patent Issued to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING on May 19 for "Overlay measurement structures having overlapping patterns" (Taiwanese Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,631,973, issued on May 19, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Overlay measurement structures having overlapping patterns" was invented by Yen-Liang Chen (Zhubei, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An overlay error measurement structure includes a lower-layer pattern disposed over a substrate, and an upper-layer pattern disposed over the lower-layer pattern and at least partially overlapping with the lower-layer pattern. The lower-layer pattern includes a plurality of first sub-patterns extending in a first direction and being arranged in a second direction crossing the first direction. T...