US Patent Issued to SCREEN Holdings on March 17 for "Substrate processing apparatus and monitoring method" (Japanese Inventor)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,578,280, issued on March 17, was assigned to SCREEN Holdings Co. Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan).

"Substrate processing apparatus and monitoring method" was invented by Shinji Shimizu (Kyoto, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A substrate processing apparatus includes a chamber, a substrate holder, an illuminator, a polarizing filter, a filter driver, a camera, and a controller. The illuminator irradiates an imaging region including a monitoring target in the chamber with illumination light. The filter driver rotates the polarizing filter to a rotation position corresponding to the monitoring target in the imaging region to reduce the unnecessary...