ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,449,734, issued on Oct. 21, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Lithography apparatus and method" was invented by Wei-Chun Yen (Tainan, Taiwan), Chi Yang (Tainan, Taiwan), Sheng-Kang Yu (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Shang-Chieh Chien (New Taipei, Taiwan), Li-Jui Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Heng-Hsin Liu (New Taipei, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In an embodiment, a method includes: heating a byproduct transport ring of an extreme ultraviolet source, the byproduct transport ring disposed beneath vanes of the extreme ultraviolet source; after heating the byproduct transport ring for a first duration,...