US Patent Issued to LAM RESEARCH on July 7 for "Substrate state detection for plasma processing tools" (Oregon Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,676,285, issued on July 7, was assigned to LAM RESEARCH Corp. (Fremont, Calif.).

"Substrate state detection for plasma processing tools" was invented by Noah Elliot Baker (West Linn, Ore.) and Thomas Mcdaniel (Wilsonville, Ore.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A substrate processing tool capable of detecting a gap and/or shifting of a substrate clamped to a clamping surface in a processing chamber based on observed behavior of RF power delivered to the processing chamber during processing. The behavior of the RF power is observed by comparing a voltage-current phase angle difference and/or impedance magnitude change between a real RF power ...