ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,286,680, issued on April 29, was assigned to JFE Steel Corp. (Tokyo).
"Thin steel sheet and method for manufacturing same" was invented by Noriaki Kohsaka (Tokyo), Junya Tobata (Tokyo), Shinjiro Kaneko (Tokyo), Yasushi Kitani (Tokyo), Yoshihiko Ono (Tokyo) and Tadachika Chiba (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A thin steel sheet has a specific chemical composition. The thin steel sheet has a microstructure in which ferrite is present in an area fraction of 4% or less (including 0%), as-quenched martensite is present in an area fraction of 10% or less (including 0%), retained austenite is present in an amount of 7% or more and 20% or le...