ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,362,135, issued on July 15, was assigned to FEI Co. (Hillsboro, Ore.).
"Method and system for automatic zone axis alignment" was invented by John J. Flanagan (Hillsboro, Ore.), Nathaniel Kurtz (Hillsboro, Ore.), Ashley Tilson (Hillsboro, Ore.) and Phillip Parker (Hillsboro, Ore.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Automatic alignment of the zone axis of a sample and a charged particle beam is achieved based on a diffraction pattern of the sample. An area corresponding to the Laue circle is segmented using a trained network. The sample is aligned with the charged particle beam by tilting the sample with a zone axis tilt determined based on the...