ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 21 -- United States Patent no. 12,605,802, issued on April 21, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).
"Condensed gas pad conditioner" was invented by Jeonghoon Oh (Saratoga, Calif.), Steven M. Zuniga (Soquel, Calif.) and Brian J. Brown (Palo Alto, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A polishing system including a platen to support a polishing pad, a carrier head to hold a substrate against the polishing pad, a source of dry ice particles, and a pad conditioner. The pad conditioner includes a compressor to generate a compressed gas stream, a mixer coupled to the source and the compressor to mix the dry ice particles with the compressed gas stream...