JP2001267195A - How to install processing equipment - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] [PROBLEMS] To increase the number of processing devices due to the increase in the diameter of a workpiece, the miniaturization of processing, and the multi-layer wiring, increase the space efficiency to reduce the construction cost and running cost of a clean room. Suppress increase. SOLUTION: A plurality of processing devices A, B, I and J for performing a series of processing in a clean room are stacked and arranged three-dimensionally, and the plurality of processing devices A to K are horizontally and vertically moved. The transfer means such as the carrier stocker 1 and the OHT for transferring the workpiece to each of the plurality of processing apparatuses A to K is connected between the plurality of processing apparatuses A to K, and thereby, the floor of the clean room is installed. Suppress area increase.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method of installing a processing apparatus, and more particularly to a method of installing a plurality of processing apparatuses for performing a series of processing in a clean room, such as a semiconductor manufacturing factory, in which the occupied area is reduced. The present invention relates to a method for installing a processing apparatus capable of suppressing an increase in the scale of an entire manufacturing plant.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a conventional semiconductor device manufacturing plant, each of these is divided into process functions such as photolithography, etching and thin film formation, which are element processes, or process flow units such as a transistor formation process and an electrode wiring formation process. Corresponding processing equipment groups are arranged in a plane, and each is combined in consideration of the shape of the processing equipment, etc., so that the clean room area and the building area are made more efficient for a certain production quantity.

[0003]

However, in a conventional semiconductor device manufacturing plant, the layout design is performed with the highest priority given to satisfying the processing functions such as pattern etching, thin film formation and exposure. No consideration is given to standardization of the installation area between the apparatus and the apparatus that processes the processes before and after using the apparatus. For this reason, a maximum device and a minimum device having an installation area are often arranged adjacent to each other, and it has become almost constant that an extra space must be secured beyond an originally required area.

Further, in recent years, in a fine processing process requiring a clean room such as a manufacturing process of a semiconductor device, a liquid crystal panel, and a magnetic disk, a carrier accommodating space is increased due to an increase in diameter of a silicon wafer or the like to be processed. The number of processing devices increases rapidly due to the increase in processing time load of process processing due to miniaturization and the rapid increase in the number of process steps due to multi-layer wiring, thereby increasing the size of the building area with respect to the production scale, that is, Space efficiency also deteriorates rapidly, the area occupied by clean rooms increases, and the scale of the entire manufacturing plant tends to increase.

For example, in a semiconductor device manufacturing process of a MOS integrated circuit process, assuming that the area of a submicron generation factory in which two-layer wiring has begun to be used is 1, a process of 0.2 μm or less using four to five-layer wiring. It has been clarified that the area of a factory that handles the same number of wafers is almost quadrupled by factory simulation, actual apparatus layout creation, and the like. This ratio of production volume to factory area is expected to expand further as miniaturization progresses further and process complexity increases.

On the other hand, the unit cost of a semiconductor device that can be obtained from a silicon wafer is required to decrease as the minimum line width decreases and the production cost further increases. With the size of factories increasing, construction costs and running costs enormous, building profitable factories has already become difficult at the building level.

In order to reduce the construction cost and running cost of a clean room, it is necessary to reduce the dead space generated due to the different sizes of the processing equipment.
As a solution to this problem, it is conceivable to stack and arrange short processing apparatuses in the height direction.However, there is no effective means for transporting the wafer carrier that stores the wafer to be processed in the height direction. Other than a multi-stage diffusion furnace that transports wafers by elevator, it has not been considered and realized.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned conventional problems, and has been proposed to improve the space efficiency with respect to an increase in the number of processing apparatuses due to an increase in the diameter of a workpiece, miniaturization of processing, and multi-layer wiring. It is an object of the present invention to provide a method of installing a processing apparatus capable of suppressing an increase in construction cost and running cost.

[0009]

According to the method of installing a processing apparatus of the present invention, a plurality of processing apparatuses for performing a series of processing in a clean room are three-dimensionally arranged. A means for moving and transferring a workpiece to each processing apparatus is disposed so as to connect a plurality of processing apparatuses, and thereby a floor required for installing a processing apparatus for manufacturing a semiconductor device or the like. The area can be significantly reduced, and the construction cost and running cost of a clean room can be reduced.

[0010] Further, the processing devices arranged three-dimensionally can be processing devices of the same model, and can be processing devices requiring occupied spaces close to each other.

Further, the processing devices can be divided into a processing device having a large occupied space and a processing device having a small occupied space, and the respective processing devices can be vertically arranged three-dimensionally.

In order to arrange a plurality of processing apparatuses in a three-dimensional manner, a gantry, a double-floor structure floor, or a suspended floor may be provided.

Further, a floor on which a plurality of processing devices for performing a series of processing processes in a clean room are installed, and an inspection device for a workpiece and a floor used by an operator who handles the inspection device are provided vertically and three-dimensionally arranged. Even so, the floor area can be reduced.

[0014]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS (First Embodiment) Hereinafter, a first embodiment of a method for installing a processing apparatus according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIG.
This will be described with reference to FIG.

In FIGS. 1 and 2, A to K denote various processing apparatuses, 1 denotes a carrier stocker for accommodating a wafer carrier containing a silicon wafer to be processed, and in this embodiment, a toll type called a high-rise stocker. Is composed of a carrier stocker. 2 is carrier stocker 1
And load ports of the processing devices A to K. Reference numeral 3 denotes a stacker crane for transferring a wafer carrier in the horizontal and vertical directions and transferring the wafer carrier between the processing apparatuses A to K.
Are shelves, which constitute a carrier stocker 1. The stacker crane 3 is a crane that rotates a pinion gear to travel in the horizontal direction, reduces driving power by a crane base rack 7 and a built-in balance weight, and moves the carrier handling robot up and down by a chain or a change nut. A shaft 8 is provided.

As the transport mechanism in the carrier stocker 1, there are various systems other than the stacker crane 3, such as an XY plotter that raises and lowers the entire traveling portion of a carrier handling robot of a crane, such as an XY plotter. In any case, a mechanism for accessing the stacker crane 3 as a representative in the vertical and traveling directions is provided, so that random access can be made to a predetermined address (horizontal and vertical positions). I have. Here, description will be made assuming a general stacker crane system.

As a wafer carrier in the generation of a wafer having a diameter of 300 mm, a carrier pod 36 for hermetically storing a wafer as shown in FIG. 6 is used, and its volume is greatly increased as compared with a conventional open air type wafer carrier. I do. Therefore, a tall type carrier stocker 1 (high-rise stocker) has been developed for the purpose of securing the storage quantity of the carrier pod 36 without increasing the installation area, and accommodates a conventional open air type wafer carrier. By making the height about twice as large as that of the type stocker, the same number of storages as the conventional carrier stocker is secured.

By the way, if an in-process transfer system in which the transfer between the processing apparatuses A to K is replaced by the carrier stocker 1 is employed, as shown in FIG. By simply arranging the carrier stockers on both sides, a sufficient margin is generated in the wafer carrier lift of the carrier stocker 1 itself. Therefore, in the present embodiment, as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, for example, processing apparatuses A and B and processing apparatuses I and J of the same model are stacked and arranged via a gantry 6. In this case, as shown in FIG. 2, the height of the processing apparatus I is almost the same as the effective height of the processing apparatus D that is tall, such as a diffusion furnace, and can be sufficiently accommodated in the conventional clean room height.

The processing equipment used in the manufacturing process of semiconductor devices varies from tall equipment such as a diffusion furnace to small and short equipment such as a wafer scrubber.
However, a small and short processing apparatus has a disadvantage that a dead space increases in layout if a large and tall processing apparatus is nearby. However, if a small processing apparatus is a processing apparatus having a sufficiently low height, if there is a mechanism for vertically transferring a wafer carrier as in the present embodiment, even if it is stacked vertically, it will not hinder production. There is no.

In this case, there is a concern that contamination by dust generated from the drive mechanism of the processing apparatus or the transport apparatus itself may occur. However, recent processing equipment encapsulates the process processing part and includes its own floating dust cleaning system. In the processing equipment of 300 mm wafer compatible generation, the wafer carrier is replaced with SMIF.
(Standerd Mechanical Interface) S stored in pod
MIF-compatible equipment lines and carriers themselves are FOUP (Fro
Since it is assumed that a carrier integrated with a sealed pod represented by nt Opened Unified Pod) carrier will be used, contamination from the surrounding environment will not be a problem as long as maintenance is assured.

As described above, the present embodiment is configured in consideration of changes in the peripheral infrastructure of the semiconductor processing process, and it is possible to stack and arrange small processing devices via the pedestal 6 or the like without any trouble. As a result, the floor area can be significantly reduced without causing the adverse effect that the driving mechanism of the system itself can be a source of contamination.

The carrier stocker 1 manages carrier information on each shelf 5 in close contact with an upper-level host computer, and is used as an alternative to the conventional carrier transport mechanism between processes (between processing devices). Doing so does not hinder physical or control.

As described above, since the wafer carrier transfer mechanism used in the carrier stocker 1 is a system with a high degree of freedom which can be randomly accessed as represented by a stacker crane system, the conventional mechanism can be applied by applying this mechanism. Transfer in the height direction in addition to the horizontal direction can be easily performed. Further, the transfer mechanism of the stocker system can perform random access regardless of whether it is directly above / directly below or diagonally above / diagonally below. Thus, by adopting a layout in which the devices are stacked in the vertical direction, as can be seen by comparing FIGS. 1 and 3, the floor space of the semiconductor production plant can be reduced, and the construction cost and running cost can be reduced.

In the present embodiment, the gantry is used for stacking the devices. However, the same configuration can be adopted even when the floor is doubled at the time of constructing the factory. The floor can be lowered.

(Second Embodiment) Next, a second embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS.

In this embodiment, as shown in FIGS. 4 and 5, a hoist-type overhead traveling transfer system (OHT) in which an overhead traveling vehicle has an up-down mechanism as a transfer device for a wafer carrier between processing apparatuses A to K. : Over head Hoist Tr
ansport system 9, the wafer carrier is vertically transferred by the vertical transfer function, and the processing apparatuses A, B and I,
J is vertically stacked in two stages.

As shown in FIG. 6, the OHT 9 includes an OHT elevating system for moving the carrier chuck 35 up and down by rotating the hoist pulley 34 for winding the hoist belt (or wire) 37 forward / reversely, and the ceiling 3 of the production factory building.
An OHT traveling system is configured to travel by driving wheels 33 in a state where an OHT track 10 composed of hanging rails suspended from 1 is held between guide wheels 32. FIG. 6 shows a cross section of the rail since the rail extends in a direction perpendicular to the plane of the paper. This hoisting type chuck mechanism is usually called a hoist, and is the origin of OHT. With these mechanisms, the OHT 9 can transport the carrier pod 36 between the processing apparatuses A to K without occupying the work area on the floor.

In a conventional in-process transfer system using OHT9, a height (900 mm) which is a standard design value is used.
It is configured to supply / collect a wafer carrier to / from a load port (± 10 mm). However,
If the equipment is installed at a position that does not interfere with the hoist running / elevation, a transfer is not possible directly above / below the wafer carrier due to its structure. It becomes possible.

Referring to the drawings, in the conventional layout, as shown in FIG. 7, the OHT 9 travels in the space above the load ports of the processing apparatuses A to K, and moves laterally without moving the wafer carrier up and down. However, in this embodiment, OH
For example, as shown in FIG. 4, processing apparatuses A and B, and processing apparatuses I and J of the same model are stacked via the gantry 11 because there is enough room for the carrier lift at T9.

Then, as shown in FIG. 5, the carrier pod 3
The processing devices I and J are staggered along with the load ports so that the hand of the OHT 9 holding the upper portion of the OHT 9 can access the carriers on the load ports 13 and 14 provided in both of the stacked devices. If the track has a structure capable of branching and gathering as shown in the vicinity of the load ports 13 and 14 in FIG. 4, it is possible to access the upper layer device I. In this case, as shown in FIG. 5, the height of the apparatus I is almost the same as the effective height of the processing apparatus D that is tall, such as a diffusion furnace, and can be sufficiently accommodated in the current clean room height.

Although the arrangement of the present embodiment is somewhat less flexible in terms of the installation conditions of the processing apparatus than the first embodiment, it can be said that it is an effective means for remodeling an existing production line. However, the OHT is different from the stocker.
Since multiple vehicles can be arranged on the rails as shown in the above, it is possible to handle mass transport where workpieces are transported to multiple manufacturing devices at one time, despite the lack of flexibility in the installation conditions of the manufacturing devices. Therefore, it is not inferior to the stocker method.

In an efficient control system such as the transfer of a wafer carrier between the processing apparatuses A to K by the OHT 9, the carrier information is usually managed by closely communicating with a host computer. Therefore, the carrier delivery instruction can be operated as flexibly as the stocker system of the first embodiment.

Further, in the present embodiment, the stacking device is shifted in the vertical direction with respect to the traveling direction of the OHT 9 as shown in FIGS. If so, it may be shifted parallel to the traveling direction.

In this embodiment, an example is shown in which the same processing apparatuses are stacked and arranged. However, if the processing apparatuses are similar in size, they can be stacked in the same manner, and an apparatus having a large installation area in the lower layer can be used. Different types of equipment, such as placing multiple devices with a small installation area in the upper layer and placing multiple devices with a small installation area in the lower layer, and placing large devices in the upper layer Is possible if there is no problem. As described above, for example, if the apparatus is originally low in height and does not cause any trouble due to the vertical arrangement, there is no particular limitation, and the installation area can be greatly reduced with the same number of apparatuses.

Further, as an embodiment which can be considered as an application, not only the processing apparatus but also an inspection apparatus and a floor used by an operator who handles the inspection apparatus are arranged on the upper layer of equipment such as the processing apparatus and designed as an isolated booth. It is possible to anticipate the development of efficient use of space, such as operating the inspection process as it is, without the operator wearing clean room work clothes in a form separated from the above.

As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to greatly reduce the area of the clean room, and further reduce the clean area for installing and working with the processing apparatus.
It can also contribute to energy savings and cost savings of clean air conditioning for running operation of factories.

Also, by arranging the same or similar devices in a concentrated stack, it is possible to prevent the length of the power supply line between the devices from increasing at an accelerating length due to an increase in the area of the clean room. Can,
Not only in the factory building and clean room itself, but also in the entire factory, it leads to initial investment and running cost reduction.

[0038]

According to the method for installing a processing apparatus of the present invention,
By arranging the processing devices vertically in the clean room as described above, the required installation area of the processing devices can be significantly reduced.

Also, means for moving the workpiece in the horizontal direction and the vertical direction, such as a tall type carrier stocker or OHT, and transferring the workpiece to each processing apparatus is arranged so as to connect the plurality of processing apparatuses. The process can be carried out safely and promptly, and the process can be performed in the same manner as the conventional process-to-process transfer.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a plan view showing a layout of a first embodiment in a method for installing a processing apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a vertical sectional side view taken along the line AA ′ of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a plan view showing a layout of a comparative example to which the embodiment is not applied.

FIG. 4 is a plan view showing a layout of a second embodiment in a method for installing a processing apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a vertical sectional side view taken along the line BB ′ of FIG. 4;

FIG. 6 is a schematic configuration diagram of an OHT used in the embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a plan view showing a layout of a comparative example to which the embodiment is not applied.

[Explanation of symbols]

 A to K processing unit 1 carrier stocker 3 stacker crane 6 gantry 9 OHT 11 gantry

Claims (7)

[Claims] 1. A method of installing a processing apparatus, comprising: disposing a plurality of processing apparatuses for performing a series of processing in a clean room in a three-dimensional manner. 2. The processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein means for moving the workpiece to each processing apparatus by moving in the horizontal direction and the vertical direction is arranged so as to connect the plurality of processing apparatuses. Installation method. 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the three-dimensionally arranged processing apparatuses are processing apparatuses of the same model. 4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the processing devices arranged three-dimensionally are processing devices requiring an occupied space close to each other. 5. The installation of the processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the processing apparatus is divided into a processing apparatus having a large occupied space and a processing apparatus having a small occupied space, and the respective processing apparatuses are vertically arranged three-dimensionally. Method. 6. The method of arranging a plurality of processing apparatuses in a three-dimensional manner, wherein the processing apparatus is arranged by providing a gantry, a double floor structure floor, or a hanging floor.
The installation method of the processing apparatus described in the above. 7. A floor in which a plurality of processing devices for performing a series of processing processes in a clean room are installed, and an inspection device for an object to be processed and a floor used by an operator who handles the inspection device are provided vertically and three-dimensionally arranged. A method for installing a processing apparatus.