ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,311,458, issued on May 27, was assigned to QINGDAO UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY (Qingdao, China) and NORTHWESTERN POLYTECHNICAL UNIVERSITY (Xi'an, China).

"Method for improving surface quality of alloy micro-area via supersaturated film and use thereof" was invented by Pengfei Guo (Qingdao, China), Lin Wu (Qingdao, China), Jiachang Wang (Qingdao, China), Yansong Liu (Qingdao, China), Xin Lin (Xi'an, China) and Hongbo Lan (Qingdao, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed are a method for improving a surface quality of an alloy micro-area via a supersaturated film and use thereof. The method includes: adding nickel chloride to a sodium ...