US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on April 29 for "Image based metrology of surface deformations" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,288,350, issued on April 29, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Image based metrology of surface deformations" was invented by Mehdi Vaez-Iravani (Los Gatos, Calif.) and Guoheng Zhao (Palo Alto, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods for detecting areas of localized tilt on a sample using imaging reflectometry measurements include obtaining a first image without blocking any light reflected from the sample and obtaining a second image while blocking some light reflected from the sample at the aperture plane. The areas of localized tilt are detected by comparing first reflectance intensity values of pixel...