ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,230,522, issued on Feb. 18, was assigned to Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas).
"Inline wafer defect detection system and method" was invented by Patrick David Noll (Richardson, Texas) and Suzie Ghidei (Dallas).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A wafer defect detection apparatus and a method of fabricating an IC using the same. Images of a plurality of semiconductor wafers forming a wafer lot are captured at a targeted process step of a fabrication flow and preprocessed, wherein a medoid image is identified as a reference wafer image. In one arrangement, preprocessed wafer images of a semiconductor wafer lot may be analyzed for defects based on...