ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,276,922, issued on April 15, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Backside deposition tuning of stress to control wafer bow in semiconductor processing" was invented by Daniel Fulford (Ballston Lake, N.Y.) and Anton J. Devilliers (Clifton Park, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of microfabrication is provided. A substrate having a working surface and having a backside surface opposite to the working surface is received. The substrate has an initial wafer bow resulting from one or more micro fabrication processing steps executed on the working surface of the substrate. The initial wafer bow of the substrate is measured ...