Continuous vacuum treatment device for wafer

Abstract

Abstract PURPOSE:To continuously treat a wafer, by separating a wafer conveyance chamber from a wafer treatment chamber, always keeping the chambers under vacuum and moving a pin-fitted rest up and down to put the wafer into and out of the treatment chamber. CONSTITUTION:A wafer 6 is conveyed from a loader 1 into a preparation chamber 12 of small capacity through a door 14. When a prescribed degree of vacuum is reached, a rest 16 with a belt conveyor and a rotary section 17 with a sliding arm 18 are automatically actuated to convey the wafer 6 onto another rest 19. The rest 19 is then elevated. The wafer 6 is received onto vertically movable pins 20 protruded by spring pressure. The arm 18 is retracted. The rest 19 is elevated further so that pins 21 come into contact with stoppers 22, the former pins 20 are thrusted down and a treatment chamber 4 is sealed up by a sealant 24. After treatment, the rest 19 is moved down. The pins 20 are protruded to support the wafer. The wafer is transferred to an unloader 5 through a small preparation chamber 13 by a similar conveying mechanism. According to this constitution, a plurality of treatment chambers can be placed in series with each other and the wafer can be set in a fixed position in each treatment chamber. Furthermore, the treatment chamber can be isolated from the conveyance chamber throughout the tratment to continuously treat the wafer without causing treatment gas to exert and influence upon the conveyance chamber.

Inventors

• 👤 Atsushi Fujisawa
• 👤 Hiroshi Maejima
• 👤 Seiichi Kato

Bibliographic Details