ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,311,409, issued on May 27, was assigned to TCL ZHONGHUAN RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY Co. LTD. (Tianjin, China).

"Silicon wafer sorting mechanism and sorting machine equipped with sorting mechanism" was invented by Lihui Jin (Tianjin, China), Hua Yang (Tianjin, China), Zhigao Ren (Tianjin, China), Huan Wang (Tianjin, China), Chuanling Ai (Tianjin, China), Dawei Wang (Tianjin, China), Zhijun Wu (Tianjin, China), Hongxia Cen (Tianjin, China) and Chen Wei (Tianjin, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A silicon wafer sorting mechanism includes a wafer distribution unit, a sorting unit, and a transmission unit disposed sequentially. The sorti...