ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,288,704, issued on April 29, was assigned to APPLIED MATERIALS Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Methods and apparatus for processing a substrate" was invented by Ralph P. Antonio (Santa Clara, Calif.), Lee Guan Tay (Singapore), Peter Lai (Santa Clara, Calif.), Sudhir R. Gondhalekar (Fremont, Calif.), Tzu-Fang Huang (San Jose, Calif.) and Jeffrey Hudgens (Santa Clara, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods and apparatus for processing a substrate are provided herein. For example, an apparatus for processing a substrate comprises a transfer robot configured to position a substrate on a substrate support disposed within an interior of a p...