ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 2 -- United States Patent no. 12,486,176, issued on Dec. 2, was assigned to DIC Corp. (Tokyo).

"Composite particle and method of producing composite particle" was invented by Meng Li (Qingdao, China), Shingo Takada (Sakura, Japan), Tomoki Dohi (Sakura, Japan), Jianjun Yuan (Sakura, Japan), Cheng Liu (Qingdao, China), Wei Zhao (Qingdao, China) and Shaowei Yang (Qingdao, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The composite particle of the present invention includes an alumina particle having a card-house structure which is formed of three or more pieces of plate-like alumina and in which the pieces of plate-like alumina are fixed to each other; and an inorganic coating part ...