ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,528,150, issued on Jan. 20, was assigned to EBARA Corp. (Tokyo).
"Polishing apparatus and polishing method" was invented by Akira Nakamura (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A film thickness measuring apparatus and an end point detector monitor a film thickness of a conductive film based on an output of an eddy current sensor disposed in a polishing table. The output of the eddy current sensor includes an impedance component, and when a resistance component and a reactance component of the impedance component are associated with the respective axes of a coordinate system having two orthogonal coordinate axes, at least some points on t...