ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 18 -- United States Patent no. 12,476,127, issued on Nov. 18, was assigned to Hitachi High-Tech Corp. (Tokyo).
"Vacuum processing apparatus" was invented by Chen Pin Hsu (Tokyo), Masatsugu Fujita (Tokyo), Satoshi Yamamoto (Tokyo) and Masakazu Isozaki (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A vacuum processing apparatus including a vacuum processing unit embracing a vacuum vessel into which a wafer to be processed is transferred and processed; a lock chamber into which the wafer is transferred; an atmospheric transfer unit embracing an atmospheric transfer chamber maintained at atmospheric pressure and inside which the wafer is transferred; and a wafer preserving container ...