Flash Lamp Wafer Heat Treatment With Preplanned Substrate Exchange
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing heat treatment apparatuses face challenges in maintaining uniform temperature and efficient substrate exchange in the treatment chamber, leading to non-uniform treatment results due to manual adjustments and inaccurate temperature control caused by disturbance light from the treatment chamber environment.
Innovation Solution
A heat treatment apparatus with a controller and planning part that creates and executes a transport plan to rapidly adjust substrate transport, ensuring a succeeding substrate is ready to enter the treatment chamber upon completion of the preceding substrate's heating treatment, using a transport robot to prioritize the exchange and maintain continuous substrate presence.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual adjustment of treatment time is used to ensure wafer exchange, then substrate presence in chamber is maintained, but processing time becomes unstable and adjustment requires long period
Solution Approach 1:
The system measures actual processing time for each substrate and feeds this information back to automatically adjust the treatment time for subsequent substrates. This closed-loop feedback mechanism eliminates manual adjustment delays and stabilizes processing time while maintaining continuous substrate presence in the chamber.
Solution Approach 2:
The system automatically adjusts its own treatment parameters based on measured processing times without requiring external manual intervention. The control unit self-regulates the treatment time to ensure optimal wafer exchange timing, making the system self-sufficient and eliminating the long adjustment period previously required.
2Temperature
If treatment time is extended to ensure wafer exchange, then temperature uniformity is maintained, but actual treatment time varies and exchange cannot be performed
Solution Approach 1:
The system measures the actual treatment time for each substrate and uses this feedback to precisely control the treatment time of subsequent substrates. This ensures that the treatment time is accurately optimized for wafer exchange while maintaining chamber temperature uniformity, eliminating the variability that previously prevented reliable exchange.
3Productivity
If rapid transport adjustment is implemented, then substrate exchange efficiency improves, but temperature stability may be compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The system prepares the succeeding substrate for exchange in advance by pre-positioning it and pre-calculating the optimal exchange timing based on measured processing times. This preliminary preparation enables rapid substrate exchange without compromising chamber temperature stability, as the exchange is executed at the precisely determined optimal moment.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution ensures rapid and accurate substrate exchange, maintaining a stable temperature in the treatment chamber and preventing excessive heat exposure, resulting in uniform treatment outcomes for semiconductor wafers.
Implementation Method 1
a heat treatment apparatus (100) which irradiates a substrate W received in a treatment chamber (6) with light from lamps to heat the substrate
Data Source
AI summary
Preheating is performed on a semiconductor wafer by irradiation with light from halogen lamps in a treatment chamber, and heating treatment is thereafter performed on the semiconductor wafer by irradiation with a flash of light from flash lamps. A controller transmits an advance notice signal to a planning part at a time that is a certain amount of time before the time at which the heating treatment of the semiconductor wafer is completed in the treatment chamber. The planning part executes replanning of transport so that the transport operation being performed by a transport robot when receiving the advance notice signal is followed by the transport of the semiconductor wafer from the treatment chamber. The planning part executes the replanning of the transport each time the heating treatment of a semiconductor wafer is performed. Thus, the transport of the semiconductor wafer is adjusted automatically and rapidly.