US Patent Issued to ASML Netherlands on April 1 for "Method and apparatus for coherence scrambling in metrology applications" (Dutch Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,265,229, issued on April 1, was assigned to ASML Netherlands B.V. (Veldhoven, Netherlands).

"Method and apparatus for coherence scrambling in metrology applications" was invented by Zili Zhou (Veldhoven, Netherlands) and Janneke Ravensbergen (Wurzburg, Netherlands).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed is a pupil shaping arrangement for obtaining a defined pupil intensity profile for a metrology illumination beam configured for use in a metrology application. The pupil shaping arrangement comprises an engineered diffuser (ED) having a defined far-field profile configured to impose said defined pupil intensity profile on said metrology ...