US Patent Issued to Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences on March 4 for "Ion beam sputtering apparatus and method" (New Zealander Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,243,715, issued on March 4, was assigned to Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Ltd. (Lower Hutt, New Zealand).

"Ion beam sputtering apparatus and method" was invented by Richard John Futter (Lower Hutt, New Zealand), Ryan James Davidson (Lower Hutt, New Zealand), Jerome Leveneur (Lower Hutt, New Zealand) and John Vedamuthu Kennedy (Lower Hutt, New Zealand).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An aspect of the invention provides an ion beam sputtering apparatus comprising an ion source configured to generate a hollow ion beam along a beam axis that is located in a hollow part of the beam; and a sputtering target having a target body th...