Heat treatment apparatus

Abstract

Disclosed is a heat treatment apparatus which includes a processing vessel having a furnace throat at its bottom and adapted to accommodate process objects therein to perform a heat treatment to the process objects under reduced pressure, the processing vessel having a vessel main body made of quartz, a metallic lid adapted to support thereon a holder for holding a plurality of process objects soas to load and unload the holder into and from the processing vessel and to close and open the furnace throat, and an annular sealing member disposed on the lid to seal a gap between the lid and the furnace throat. A contact-preventing member is disposed between the lid and the furnace throat to prevent contact of the lid with the furnace throat due to squashing of the sealing member that would otherwise occur when an internal pressure of the processing vessel is reduced.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to heat treatment apparatus. Background technique [0002] In the manufacture of semiconductor devices, various processing devices (semiconductor manufacturing devices) are used in order to perform oxidation, diffusion, CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition: Chemical Vapor Deposition) on objects to be processed such as semiconductor wafers (hereinafter referred to as wafers). . Among them, as one type of processing apparatus, there is known a batch-type heat processing apparatus capable of heat-treating a plurality of objects at one time, such as a vertical heat processing apparatus (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-237238). [0003] Such as Figure 13 Partially shown, as the heat treatment device, there is the following device (for example, a decompression diffusion device, hereinafter referred to as the former heat treatment device), which includes: a quartz processing container (processing ...

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Problems solved by technology

[0005] However, in the former heat treatment apparatus, there is a problem that, when the inside of the processing container 3 is in a depressurized state, the gap between the lid body 15 and the furnace mouth 2a (specifically, between the furnace mouth flange 3a ) Because the above-mentioned O-ring 32 is crushed, the cover body 15 is in direct contact with the furnace mouth 2a (specifically the furnace mouth flange 3a), so that the active force acts on the furnace mouth 2a (specifically the furnace mouth flange 3a) , resulting in the generation of cracks on the furnace mouth 2a of the processing container and the generation of particles due to tiny cracks

[0006] On the other hand, in the latter heat treatment apparatus, there is a problem that, when the processing container 3 is in a depressurized state, between the lid body 15 and the manifold 50, the O-ring 32 is crushed and the lid is damaged. The body 15 is in direct contact with the manifold 50, and friction is caused due to the difference in thermal expansion between the two, which causes the friction to become the cause of metal contamination of the wafer

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