Apparatus for handling and treating wafers

Claim 1

A wafer processing system including a processor for treating wafers which are automatically sequenced through said processor said processor having means for retaining each of said wafers during treatment said system comprising: a shuttle with back and forth movement having an upper slide and a lower slide the upper slide being spaced from the top of the lower slide a parallel distance greater than a wafer thickness, said upper slide having wafer positioning means for locating a wafer on said retaining means; send track means for supplying wafers to said processor and receive track means for receiving treated wafers, said send track means being coplanar with the top of said upper slide and said receive track means coplanar with the top of said lower slide; means for moving said shuttle to place said upper slide in close proximity to said send track means, to place said lower slide in close proximity to said receive track means, and to position a wafer on said upper slide in proximity to said retaining means; and means for moving said retaining means in a direction perpendicular to said shuttle movement, to up, down and strip positions where said up position is above the top of said upper slide, the down position is substantially even with said parallel space between slides and said strip position is below the top of said lower slide.