ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 4 -- United States Patent no. 12,322,568, issued on June 3, was assigned to KLA Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.).
"Auto-focus sensor implementation for multi-column microscopes" was invented by Nicholas Petrone (San Jose, Calif.), Lawrence Muray (Moraga, Calif.) and Alan Brodie (Palo Alto, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An array of localized auto-focus sensors provides direct measurement of the working distance between each microscope column in the array and the substrate being imaged below. The auto-focus sensors measure the working distance between each column and the imaging substrate as it passes over a point on the substrate to be imaged. The working distance measure...