ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,444,657, issued on Oct. 14, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING Co. LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Wafer processing method" was invented by Yan-Hong Liu (Hsinchu County, Taiwan), Daniel M. Y. Yang (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Che-Fu Chen (Taipei, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method includes: transferring a wafer from a factory interface through a load lock chamber to a buffer chamber; transferring the wafer from the buffer chamber to a process chamber; etching the wafer in the process chamber, to remove a material of the wafer; and after the wafer is etched, performing reflectance measurements to the wafer in the factory int...