US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on April 21 for "Apparatus and methods for verifying alignment between a shadow ring and a substrate" (Singaporean Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,607,444, issued on April 21, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Apparatus and methods for verifying alignment between a shadow ring and a substrate" was invented by Sock Hoon Lim (Singapore), Ramie Madeja (Singapore) and Wee Teng Fan (Singapore).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods and apparatus for verifying alignment between an opaque shadow ring and a substrate are provided. In some embodiments, the apparatus includes a tool comprising: a transparent ring having an inner edge defining a central opening and an outer edge and having a top side and a bottom side; a gauge mark on or in the transparent ring sp...