ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,261,078, issued on March 25, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).
"Processing method and processing apparatus" was invented by Takuya Umise (Nirasaki, Japan), Masato Shinada (Tokyo) and Tetsuya Miyashita (Nirasaki, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A processing method for processing a substrate includes: a first arrangement step of mounting, on a stage provided in a processing container to mount the substrate on the stage, a plate-shaped protective member which is prepared in advance at a location in the processing container different from a location on the stage and which is configured to protect an upper surface of the stag...