ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,308,204, issued on May 20, was assigned to Applied Materials Israel Ltd. (Rehovot, Israel).

"Optical auto-focus unit and a method for auto-focus" was invented by Sissi Lachmi (Rehovot, Israel) and Hagay Famini (Moshav Ptachia, Israel).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A charged particle evaluation system that may include a column that includes an opening; an illumination unit that is configured to scan an area of a sample with an electron beam that passes through the opening; and an optical auto-focus unit that is configured to (i) illuminate the sample with an optical beam that is proximate to the electron beam, during the scan of the area ...