US Patent Issued to Tokyo Electron on Dec. 9 for "Substrate processing apparatus, polishing pad inspecting device, and method for inspecting polishing pad" (Japanese Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,491,602, issued on Dec. 9, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Substrate processing apparatus, polishing pad inspecting device, and method for inspecting polishing pad" was invented by Tsutomu Fukunaga (Kumamoto, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A substrate processing apparatus includes: a polishing pad that polishes a substrate; a pod that accommodates a polishing surface of the polishing pad, which is brought into contact with the substrate; an imaging unit that images the polishing surface of the polishing pad through the pod; and an image processing unit that processes image data imaged by the imaging unit to detect dete...