US Patent Issued to Tokyo Electron on March 25 for "Normal-incidence in-situ process monitor sensor" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,261,030, issued on March 25, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Normal-incidence in-situ process monitor sensor" was invented by Ching Ling Meng (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Holger Tuitje (Fremont, Calif.), Qiang Zhao (Milpitas, Calif.), Hanyou Chu (Palo Alto, Calif.) and Xinkang Tian (Fremont, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An apparatus for in-situ etching monitoring in a plasma processing chamber includes a continuous wave broadband light source, an illumination system configured to illuminate an area on a substrate with an incident light beam being directed from the continuous wave broadband light source at normal incidence...