US Patent Issued to KLA on Sept. 16 for "Confocal chromatic metrology for EUV source condition monitoring" (California, Michigan Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,418,972, issued on Sept. 16, was assigned to KLA Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.).

"Confocal chromatic metrology for EUV source condition monitoring" was invented by Patrick Tae (San Jose, Calif.), Caijun Su (San Jose, Calif.), Ravichandra Jagannath (Milpitas, Calif.) and Brian Ahr (Ann Arbor, Mich.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A light source includes a rotatable drum to be coated with xenon ice and illuminated by a laser beam to produce a plasma. The drum may also be translatable. The light source further includes a confocal chromatic sensor to measure distances from the confocal chromatic sensor to the rotatable drum. The confocal chromatic...