semiconductor manufacturing equipment

Abstract

Abstract PURPOSE:To shorten the time required for a cleaning treatment by providing a vacuum preparation chamber for supplying and recovering a dummy substrate in a vacuum processing chamber while a vacuum preparation chamber for loading and unloading is provided. CONSTITUTION:For the cleaning of a vacuum processing chamber 20, a vacuum preparation chamber 32 is reduced its pressure to the same degree of the pressure of the vacuum processing chamber 20 and exhausted. Vacuum opening and closing means are opened and both the chambers are connected. A dummy substrate 51 is taken out from a cassette 52 by a substrate transfer apparatus and is loaded on a substrate placing position 11 in the chamber 20. Then, the vacuum opening and closing means are closed, both the chambers 20 and 32 are isolated and the vacuum treatment chamber 20 is cleaned. After the termination, the means are opened, both the chambers 20 and 32 are connected, the dummy substrate 51 loaded at the position 11 is recovered in the cassette 42 by a reverse operation of the above-mentioned operation and the means are closed. In this way, repeating atmosphere opening and vacuum exhaust of vacuum preparation chambers 30, 31 for loading and unloading without necessity of exchanging a cassette for substrate supply and recovery and the cassette for dummy substrate supply and recovery, the time required for a cleaning treatment can be shortened and the through- put can be improved.

Inventors

• 👤 Kenji Tamai
• 👤 健二 玉井
• 👤 Keiji Tada
• 👤 多田　啓司

Bibliographic Details