ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,501,004, issued on Dec. 16, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).
"Substrate imaging apparatus" was invented by Norihisa Koga (Koshi, Japan), Tadashi Nishiyama (Koshi, Japan) and Yasuaki Noda (Koshi, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In one embodiment, a substrate imaging apparatus includes: a rotary holding unit that holds and rotates a substrate; a mirror member having a reflecting surface that opposes an end face of the substrate and a peripheral portion of a back surface of the substrate held by the rotary holding unit, the reflecting surface being inclined with respect to a rotation axis of the rotary holding unit; and a c...