US Patent Issued to Tokyo Electron on Nov. 3 for "Contactless wafer positioning carrier design" (Florida, Texas, New York Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,787,714, issued on Nov. 3, was assigned to Tokyo Electron Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Contactless wafer positioning carrier design" was invented by Henry Jim Fulford (Marianna, Fla.), Mark I. Gardner (Austin, Texas) and Daniel Fulford (Albany, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of wafer handling includes providing a wafer on a wafer carrier on a wafer chuck on a vacuum plate. The wafer carrier includes a permanent magnet. The wafer chuck includes an electromagnet. The wafer is raised against a gravity direction by flowing an electrical current through the electromagnet so that the wafer carrier is repelled from the wafer chuck while the wafe...