Patent ID: 6681187
Filing Date: 2004-01-20
Classification: G03C

Abstract:
A method for determining a composition amount of each of N constituent components when a functional mixture including the N constituent components is to be prepared, the method comprising the steps of:(1) determining a correlation matrix R having as elements correlation coefficients between composition amounts c1, c2, c3, . . . , cN of the N constituent components of each of M functional mixtures C, each functional mixture C being known in advance to have required functionality, and M being greater than N; (2) calculating a Mahalanobis distance D2 or D for all of composition amounts u1, u2, u3, . . . , uN of the N constituent components of a functional mixture U, it being unknown whether or not the functional mixture U has the required functionality; and (3) varying the composition amount of at least one of the constituent components of the functional mixture U such that the Mahalanobis distance is reduced, and determining as a composition amount of the at least one constituent component in the functional mixture to be prepared the composition amount at which the Mahalanobis distance is reduced, wherein D2=URâˆ’1UT, UT representing the transposed matrix of a matrix U, the matrix U being (u1, u2, u3, . . . , uN), and each composition amount ck of each of the M functional mixtures C and each composition amount uk of the functional mixture U being transformed such that, for each of the N constituent components, the average of the composition amounts of the constituent component in the M functional mixtures C and the functional mixture U is 0 and the standard deviation thereof is 1.0.