US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on July 29 for "Displacement measurements in semiconductor wafer processing" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,374,571, issued on July 29, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Displacement measurements in semiconductor wafer processing" was invented by Justin H. Wong (Concord, Calif.) and Ehud Chatow (Palo Alto, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Wafers that begin as flat surfaces during a semiconductor manufacturing process may become warped or bowed as layers and features are added to an underlying substrate. This warpage may be detected between manufacturing processes by rotating the wafer adjacent to a displacement sensor. The displacement sensor may generate displacement data relative to a baseline measurement to...