ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,345,653, issued on July 1, was assigned to SHIMADZU Corp. (Kyoto, Japan).
"Defect inspection apparatus" was invented by Hiroshi Horikawa (Kyoto, Japan) and Kenji Takubo (Kyoto, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "This defect inspection apparatus (100) is provided with an excitation unit (1), a laser illumination unit (2), an interference unit (30), an imaging unit (31), a holding member (4) for holding the imaging unit at a position spaced apart from an inspection target (90) by a predetermined distance, a connecting member (5) for connecting the holding member or the imaging unit and the excitation unit, and a controller (6) for generat...