The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 15, 2020
Filed:
Oct. 14, 2019
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Hsinchu, TW;
Yi Yang, Fremont, CA (US);
Yu-Jen Wang, San Jose, CA (US);
Jesmin Haq, Milpitas, CA (US);
Tom Zhong, Saratoga, CA (US);
TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY, LTD., Hsinchu, TW;
Abstract
A method for etching a magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ) structure is described. A stack of MTJ layers on a bottom electrode on a wafer is provided. A metal hard mask layer is provided on the MTJ stack. A stack of multiple dielectric hard masks is formed on the metal hard mask wherein each successive dielectric hard mask has etch selectivity with respect to its underlying and overlying layers. The dielectric hard mask layers are etched in turn selectively with respect to their underlying and overlying layers wherein each successive pattern size is smaller than the preceding pattern size. The MTJ stack is etched selectively with respect to the bottommost combination dielectric and metal hard mask pattern to form a MTJ device having a MTJ pattern size smaller than a bottommost pattern size.