US Patent Issued to Lam Research on June 9 for "Systems and techniques for optical measurement of thin films" (Oregon, Washington Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,652,992, issued on June 9, was assigned to Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, Calif.).

"Systems and techniques for optical measurement of thin films" was invented by Liu Yang (Seattle), Mengping Li (Sherwood, Ore.), Shantinath Ghongadi (Tigard, Ore.) and Andrew James Pfau (Portland, Ore.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Methods provided herein may include illuminating a region on a wafer within a semiconductor processing tool, the wafer having a layer of a material that is at least semi-transparent to light and has a measurable extinction coefficient, and the region being a first fraction of the wafer's surface, detecting light reflected off the ...