US Patent Issued to Carl Zeiss SMT on May 27 for "Optical assembly, projection exposure apparatus and method" (German Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,313,978, issued on May 27, was assigned to Carl Zeiss SMT GmbH (Oberkochen, Germany).

"Optical assembly, projection exposure apparatus and method" was invented by Andreas Raba (Niederschoenenfeld, Germany), Johannes Lippert (Buch am Wald, Germany) and Markus Raab (Schillingsfuerst, Germany).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An optical assembly of a projection exposure apparatus for semiconductor lithography comprises an optical element and an actuator for deforming the optical element. The actuator is subjected to a bias voltage by a controller that is present. A projection exposure apparatus for semiconductor lithography comprises an optica...