ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,747,491, issued on Sept. 29, was assigned to Buhler Alzenau GmbH (Alzenau, Germany).
"Tubular sputter cathode" was invented by Jens-Peter Biethan (Hegenheim, France), Martin Stapp (Dreiech, Germany) and Harro Hagedorn (Frankfurt, Germany).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A magnetron sputtering system including a substrate to be coated and a magnetron sputtering device including at least one rotatable tubular cathode, a mask positioned between the cathode and the substrate and at least one magnet. The magnet is tiltably supported inside the tubular cathode. The system further includes a controller, wherein the controller is configured to co...