US Patent Issued to Hitachi High-Tech on July 1 for "Defect inspection apparatus and defect inspection method" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,345,661, issued on July 1, was assigned to Hitachi High-Tech Corp. (Tokyo).

"Defect inspection apparatus and defect inspection method" was invented by Toshifumi Honda (Tokyo), Shunichi Matsumoto (Tokyo) and Nobuhiro Obara (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A defect inspection apparatus including illumination optical system configured to irradiate a sample with an illumination spot; a detector arrangement configured to detect, from a plurality of directions, reflected light from the sample; a scanning controller configured to control a scan of the sample with the illumination spot by overlapping detection regions such that the detection...