US Patent Issued to Western Digital Technologies on July 15 for "Pre-solder bump preventive overcoating" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,361,966, issued on July 15, was assigned to Western Digital Technologies Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).

"Pre-solder bump preventive overcoating" was invented by Irizo Naniwa (Fujisawa, Japan), Kenichi Murata (Ebina, Japan) and Yuhsuke Matsumoto (Fujisawa, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A hard disk drive flexure assembly includes an insulative base layer over a metal substrate, a first conductive layer over the base layer, a plurality of electrical pads each comprising a second conductive layer over the first conductive layer, a pre-formed bump of solder material positioned over each pad, and a conductive cover layer over at least a porti...