ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,399,438, issued on Aug. 26, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
"Method and apparatus for removing contamination" was invented by Yu-Chih Huang (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Yu-Kai Chiou (Taipei, Taiwan), Chieh-Jen Cheng (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Li-Jui Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Cleaning equipment for an EUV wafer chuck or clamp, which removes particles that have accumulated between burls on the surface of the wafer chuck. The equipment includes a spinning bi-polar electrode placed in proximity to the surface, which can attract and adsorb the charged particle residue therefrom us...