PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15866696
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-01
Publication Date: 2018-05
Patent Classification: ["356", "508000"]

Abstract:
An encoder head configured for use with a lithographic exposure tool. The head is devoid of a multiplicity of stand-alone optical retroreflectors. The head includes a single, geometrically substantially perfect optically-isotropic cuboid complemented with optically-isotropic prismatic elements to form a contraption that, in combination with a diffraction grating disposed on a wafer-stage of the exposure tool, splits a single input beam of light delivered to the contraption into four measurement (sub-)beams of light (two in xz-plane, two in yz-plane) and causes each of these sub-beams traverse two prismatic elements and be retro-reflected internally within the cuboid to exit the encoder head at a non-zero angle with respect to the input beam of light, thereby solving problems of (i) structural complexity of a conventional encoder head for use in an exposure tool, (ii) burdensome alignment of the multitude of optical prisms in the process of forming such encoder head, and (iii) cyclic non-linear errors associated with measurements involving conventional corner-cubes-based encoder heads while, at the same time, reducing the geometrical footprint of the encoder head (without reducing the cross-section of the single input beam).

Claim (Index 10):
The optical system according to  claim 1 , wherein the combination is configured as a part of an encoder head of a lithographic exposure tool, said encoder head further comprising\n an optical input unit including an input optical fiber configured to deliver said input beam, and an optical output unit including an output optical fiber configured to received and collect said reflected beam, wherein the reflected beam is inclined at a non-zero angle with respect to the input beam.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 11.0
- Percentile: 86.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.96226
- Patent Class: 356.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15483887', '15800480', '13672234', '14880812', '14736118']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7374274468109311
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5213968568003694
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7158243878098749
- Mean Citation Score: 309.48849
- Max Citation Score: 346.68204
- Similarity Product: 280.0462992951106

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test