ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,579,654, issued on March 17, was assigned to FEI Co. (Hillsboro, Ore.).
"Interface detection in reciprocal space" was invented by John Francis Flanagan (Hillsboro, Ore.), Christopher John Hakala (Hillsboro, Ore.) and Lucas Winiarski (Portland, Ore.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods and apparatus determine a location of a boundary of a given material in a sample, based on classification of reciprocal space images at respective positions. A diffraction image at a given position is classified to identify a material at that position. Imaging and classification at multiple positions can quickly and reliably find the boundary with sub-mi...