US Patent Issued to Tokyo Electron on Sept. 8 for "Contact patterning" (New York Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,733,470, issued on Sept. 8, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Contact patterning" was invented by Hojin Kim (Albany, N.Y.), Minseok Oh (Albany, N.Y.), Soo Doo Chae (Albany, N.Y.) and Toru Hisamatsu (Albany, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of forming contacts includes forming a conformal etch stop layer over a staircase layer stack substrate, the staircase layer stack substrate including a plurality of steps on a substrate, each step including a pair of a first layer and a second layer and having a sidewall extending from one step to another step. The method further includes patterning the etch stop layer to remov...