Liquid chemical supply system

Abstract

A liquid chemical supply system includes a liquid chemical pump having a pump chamber for supplying a liquid chemical and a volume variation member that will vary the volume of the pump chamber, and will intake or discharge the liquid chemical based upon a change in the volume of the pump chamber in accordance with the volume variation member. The system also comprises an operation means for causing the volume variation member to operate, an operation amount detection means for detecting the operation amount of the volume variation member, a displacement control means for performing displacement control so that the volume variation member will be displaced by the operation means when liquid chemical ports that lead to the pump chamber are in the closed state, and a determination means for determining the presence or absence of gas inside the pump chamber based upon the operation amount detection results from the operation amount detection means during displacement control.

Description

[0001]The present application claims priority based on Japan Patent Application No. 2006-018504 filed on Jan. 27, 2006, and the entire contents of that application is incorporated by reference in this specification.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to a liquid chemical supply system that employs a liquid chemical pump in order to perform intake and discharge of a liquid chemical, and also relates to a liquid chemical supply system that is suitable for a semiconductor manufacturing device which uses a liquid chemical in order to, for example, apply to a semiconductor.BACKGROUND ART[0003]A liquid chemical pump is provided with a semiconductor manufacturing device in order to apply a predetermined quantity of liquid chemical to a semiconductor wafer. One of the liquid chemical pumps is designed such that a pump chamber in which liquid chemical is stored and a pressure application chamber that introduces compressed air are separated by a separation member such as...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0076]As the pump chamber 13 in the liquid chemical pump 10 is sealed and the air pressure is changed by means of the electropneumatic regulator 28, and an air intrusion determination is performed based upon the amount of bellows extension or contraction (the change in bellows length), air intrusion can be accurately detected in the pump chamber 13. The exhaustion of liquid chemical in the liquid chemical tank can also be determined based upon the results of the air intrusion detection. In addition, when an air removal operation is to be performed after air intrusion, it will also be possible to accurately determine whether or not all gas has been discharged. Thus, liquid chemical discharge supply can be ideally performed by means of the liquid chemical pump 10.

[0077]Since the system is constructed to perform feedback control of the movement speed of the diaphragm plate 16 that forms the bellows-type diaphragm 12 during liquid chemical intake or discharge (i.e., constructed to perform feedback control of the amount of operation thereof), the change in volume of the pump chamber 13 can be controlled as intended. In this way, it will be possible to control the liquid chemical intake flow rate or discharge flow rate at an intended flow rate with a high degree of accuracy.

[0078]In the performance of operation amount feedback control, the position detector 36 is an indispensable constituent. In the aforementioned construction in which the detection results of the position detector 36 are employed in order to determine air intrusion inside the pump chamber 13, a

Problems solved by technology

However, if it is not confirmed whether or not the air has been completely removed therefrom before the liquid chemical pu

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