ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,373,939, issued on July 29, was assigned to NuFlare Technology Inc. (Yokohama, Japan).
"Defect inspection method" was invented by Ryoichi Hirano (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "According to an embodiment, a defect inspection method is performed with a defect inspection apparatus. The defect inspection apparatus is adapted to irradiate a first sample with illumination light to acquire a first sample image, and compare the first sample image to a reference image to inspect a defect. The defect inspection method includes generating the reference image, acquiring the first sample image, setting a defect detection condition using an ind...