US Patent Issued to SHIMADZU on April 7 for "Defect inspection apparatus and defect inspection method" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,596,105, issued on April 7, was assigned to SHIMADZU Corp. (Kyoto, Japan).

"Defect inspection apparatus and defect inspection method" was invented by Hiroshi Horikawa (Kyoto, Japan), Kenji Takubo (Kyoto, Japan) and Takahide Hatahori (Kyoto, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A defect inspection apparatus (100) according to the present invention includes an exciter (1), an irradiator (laser illuminator 2) configured to irradiate an inspection target (8) with laser light, and a measurer (3) configured to change a phase of the laser light reflected by the inspection target (8) to cause the laser light having an unchanged phase to interfer...