Front end wafer staging with wafer cassette turntables and on-the-fly wafer center finding
First Claim
1. An apparatus for introducing wafers into a processing system, comprising:
- (a) a loadlock chamber having first and second openings and at least one wafer cassette secured therein, the wafer cassette comprising at least two coplanar wafer seats disposed side-by-side;
(b) a transfer chamber connected to the first opening in the loadlock chamber;
(c) an enclosure connected to the second opening in the loadlock chamber, the enclosure having a base, a top, sidewalls, and a door, the enclosure comprising;
(i) two or more wafer cassette turntables disposed in the enclosure and rotatably mounted on a support platform in proximity to the loadlock chamber; and
(ii) a wafer handler module mounted on the support platform adjacent the two or more wafer cassette turntables.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A front end staging method and apparatus is provided to introduce and remove a set of wafers from a vacuum processing system. The system generally comprises a support platform, one or more wafer cassette turntables disposed on the platform, a wafer handler disposed adjacent the turntables, a wafer center finding device and a filter disposed to control particles in the vicinity of the wafers. The wafer cassette turntables are rotatably mounted to the support in the preferred embodiment. The processing system may also include one or more processing chambers, where each processing chamber defines a plurality of isolated processing regions therein. The wafer center finding device may include an optical sensor system including optimal emitters aligned with optical sensors.
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Citations
17 Claims
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1. An apparatus for introducing wafers into a processing system, comprising:
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(a) a loadlock chamber having first and second openings and at least one wafer cassette secured therein, the wafer cassette comprising at least two coplanar wafer seats disposed side-by-side; (b) a transfer chamber connected to the first opening in the loadlock chamber; (c) an enclosure connected to the second opening in the loadlock chamber, the enclosure having a base, a top, sidewalls, and a door, the enclosure comprising; (i) two or more wafer cassette turntables disposed in the enclosure and rotatably mounted on a support platform in proximity to the loadlock chamber; and (ii) a wafer handler module mounted on the support platform adjacent the two or more wafer cassette turntables. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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13. An apparatus for introducing wafers into a transfer chamber of a processing system, comprising:
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(a) an enclosure having a base, a top, sidewalls, a door, and an opening; (b) one or more wafer cassette turntables disposed in the enclosure and rotatably mounted on a support platform in the enclosure; (c) a wafer handler module disposed adjacent the wafer cassette turntables; and (d) a loadlock chamber having at least one wafer cassette secured therein, the wafer cassette comprising at least two co-planar wafer seats disposed side-by-side, the load lock chamber having a first opening connecting to the opening in the enclosure and a second opening for connecting to the transfer chamber. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17)
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Specification