ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,730,059, issued on Sept. 8, was assigned to ASML NETHERLANDS B.V. (Veldhoven, Netherlands).
"Apparatus and method for cleaning an inspection system" was invented by Andrey Nikipelov (Eindhoven, Netherlands), Saeedeh Farokhipoor (Eindhoven, Netherlands) and Maarten Van Kampen (Eindhoven, Netherlands).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method and apparatus for cleaning vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) optics (e.g., one or more mirrors of a VUV) of a substrate inspection system is disclosed. The cleaning system ionizes or disassociates hydrogen gas in a VUV optics environment to generate hydrogen radicals (e.g., H*) or ions (e.g., H+, H2+, H3+), which...