ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,494,363, issued on Dec. 9, was assigned to Kokusai Electric Corp. (Tokyo).

"Method of processing substrate, method of manufacturing semiconductor device, recording medium, and substrate processing apparatus" was invented by Shingo Nohara (Toyama, Japan), Kiyohisa Ishibashi (Toyama, Japan), Takafumi Nitta (Toyama, Japan) and Kimihiko Nakatani (Toyama, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "There is provided a technique including: forming a first film containing first element and second element; and forming a second film adjacent to the first film and containing the first element and the second element being different in characteristics from ...