US Patent Issued to HITACHI HIGH-TECH on July 22 for "Defect inspection apparatus and defect inspection method" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,366,538, issued on July 22, was assigned to HITACHI HIGH-TECH Corp. (Tokyo).

"Defect inspection apparatus and defect inspection method" was invented by Toshifumi Honda (Tokyo), Yuta Urano (Tokyo), Eiji Arima (Tokyo), Hiromichi Yamakawa (Tokyo), Shunichi Matsumoto (Tokyo) and Hisaaki Kanai (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A defect inspection apparatus includes an illumination unit configured to irradiate a surface of a sample with a linear illumination spot; a condensing detection unit configured to condense reflected light of the illumination spot and to control a polarization state of the incident light to form an optical image; an...