US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on April 14 for "Aligner station with lifting mechanism" (Texas Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,603,261, issued on April 14, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Aligner station with lifting mechanism" was invented by Michael Carl Hankes (Austin, Texas).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An aligner station includes an aligner stage configured to support a carrier of a process kit ring. The aligner stage is configured to rotate to correct an alignment of the carrier and of the process kit ring supported by the carrier relative to a target orientation. The aligner station further includes a lift mechanism configured to lift the process kit ring from the carrier. The aligner stage is further configured to rotated...