US Patent Issued to Applied Materials on March 31 for "Methods and apparatus for processing a substrate" (Singaporean, American Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,590,361, issued on March 31, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).

"Methods and apparatus for processing a substrate" was invented by Yaoying Zhong (Singapore), Siew Kit Hoi (Singapore), John Klocke (Kalispell, Mont.) and Bridger Earl Hoerner (Columbia Falls, Mont.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods and apparatus for processing a substrate are provided herein. For example, a method comprises in a process chamber, processing a substrate in a presence of an electric field, subsequently capturing an image of the substrate, determining whether substrate arcing occurred based upon analysis of the captured image, a...