US Patent Issued to NIKON on May 12 for "Spatial light modulation unit and exposure apparatus" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,625,433, issued on May 12, was assigned to NIKON Corp. (Tokyo).

"Spatial light modulation unit and exposure apparatus" was invented by Yasuhito Kubota (Saitama, Japan), Yasushi Mizuno (Saitama, Japan), Masaki Kato (Yokohama, Japan), Masaki Nishimura (Tokyo) and Hitoshi Mizuno (Yokohama, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A spatial light modulation unit is used in an exposure apparatus that exposes an exposure pattern onto a photosensitive substrate while moving the photosensitive substrate in a scan direction. The spatial light modulation unit includes: a spatial light modulator having a plurality of elements; a controller that controls...