JP2868637B2 - Plate transfer device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a plate-like body conveying device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art For example, taking a resist coating / developing process in a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus as an example, an adhesion processing section, a cooling section, a resist coating section, a heating section and the like are arranged in the middle of a semiconductor wafer transfer path. Are sequentially conveyed to each processing unit. US Pat. No. 4,433,951 discloses a semiconductor wafer transfer device in this case.
No., JP-B-62-10072, JP-A-62-8451.
No. 7, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 62-245645, etc., on a multi-joint arm or a base that can rotate and move horizontally, one or two tweezers that support a wafer at the tip and drive linearly forward and backward are provided. Those equipped with are adopted.

[0003]

When the wafers are sequentially transferred to different processing units one after another, for example, in a resist coating and developing process for the wafers, the processing unit receives the processed wafers from the processing unit. An arm having one arm and an unprocessed wafer in advance, and a second arm for loading a processed wafer into the processing unit immediately after receiving a processed wafer by the first arm, Excellent in increasing throughput. With this in mind, the only conventional articulated arm of one as reduced slew flop Tsu DOO, becomes significant cost when the multi-joint arm 2 provided.

[0004] Therefore, an arrangement in which two tweezers arms that linearly move forward and backward are arranged vertically is suitable for improving the above-mentioned throughput.

However, considering the state in which a wafer, for example, which has been subjected to an adhesion process in which heating is performed, is previously supported on one of the tweezers arms, and is then loaded into a cooling unit, the following problems occur. . That is, when the wafer having undergone the cooling process is received using the other tweezers arm, the wafer immediately after the heating process is present immediately below or directly above the cooled wafer. Then, the temperature of the cooled wafer rises due to the heat of the heated wafer, and there has been a problem that it is not possible to realize the resist coating with a uniform film thickness in the subsequent resist coating step.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to improve the processing throughput by simultaneously holding a plurality of plate-like members, and to reduce the thermal effect between the plate-like members. To provide a transfer device.

[0007]

According to the present invention, there is provided a plate-like body conveying apparatus which is capable of rotating at least around a rotatable base and a plurality of positions eccentric from a center of rotation of the base on the base. A plurality of transfer arms, one end of which is supported, and the other end of which can support a plate-like body, and a control means for independently controlling the rotation of the base and the plurality of transfer arms. I do.

[0008]

[Function] After the plate is received from a predetermined position by another arm while the plate is held in one arm in advance,
By rotating the base and the one arm, the plate-like body can be carried into the above-mentioned predetermined location. At this time, it is possible to prevent the two plate-like bodies to be delivered from overlapping each other during the operation of receiving and delivering the plate-like body, so that the thermal influence between the two can be reduced.

[0009]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Hereinafter, as an embodiment of the present invention, a case where the plate-like body conveying apparatus according to the present invention is applied to a resist coating apparatus will be described.

First, an overall outline of a resist film forming apparatus according to this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG.

As shown in FIG. 1, the main body 10 of the resist film forming apparatus according to the present embodiment has a processing unit 12 and a loading / unloading mechanism 30.

The loading / unloading mechanism 30 includes a wafer carrier 42
It is provided for taking out the unprocessed semiconductor wafer w stored in the mounting table and mounting it on the mounting table 40, and for storing the processed semiconductor wafer w mounted on the mounting table 40 in the wafer carrier 44. Things.

For this purpose, the loading / unloading mechanism 30 includes a tweezers 38 for holding the semiconductor wafer w and an X-direction moving mechanism 32 for moving the tweezers 38 in the X-direction.
And a Y-direction moving mechanism 34 for moving the tweezers 38 in the Y direction, and a θ-direction rotating mechanism 36 for moving the tweezers 38 in the θ direction. Further, the loading / unloading mechanism 30 includes an elevating mechanism (not shown) for vertically moving the wafer carrier 42 and the wafer carrier 44.

On the other hand, the processing unit 12 includes various processing mechanisms 20 for performing various processes on the semiconductor wafer w.
And a transfer mechanism 1 for loading and unloading the semiconductor wafer w into and from each of the processing mechanisms 20 to 28
And 4.

The transport mechanism 14 moves X along the transport path 15
Base 16a reciprocating in the direction, a second base 16b capable of, for example, rotational drive and elevating drive with respect to the first base 16a, and a base rotation center on the base 16b Has two tweezers 18, 18, which are eccentric, for example, rotatably supported at two places as a transfer arm.

By providing two focuses 18, even when a plurality of semiconductor wafers w are processed in parallel, the semiconductor wafers w can be efficiently transported. The details of the tweezers 18 will be described later.

In the resist film forming apparatus of the present embodiment, the semiconductor wafer w previously mounted on the mounting table 40 is transferred to each of the processing chambers 2 to be described later by using such a transfer mechanism 14.
The semiconductor wafer w is subjected to various processes by sequentially repeating loading and unloading of the wafers 0 to 28, and then is mounted on the mounting table 40 again.

The transport path 15 of the transport mechanism 14
An adhesion processing mechanism 20, a baking mechanism 22, a cooling mechanism 24, a first coating mechanism 26, and a second coating mechanism 28 are provided along the transport path 15 on both sides.

The adhesion process mechanism 20 is a process for improving the adhesion between the semiconductor wafer w and the resist film. The adhesion process is performed by heating the wafer w to 90 ° C., for example.

The cooling mechanism 24 cools the semiconductor wafer w heated by the adhesion processing mechanism 22. Here, it is assumed that the wafer is cooled at a predetermined coolant temperature within a range of room temperature ± 2 ° C., for example.

In the bake mechanism 22, the semiconductor wafer w on which the resist film has been formed is subjected to a heat treatment by the first or second coating device 26, 28. This heat treatment is performed to evaporate the solvent remaining in the resist film applied on the semiconductor wafer w. This bake mechanism 2
Since the heat treatment performed in step 2 is longer than the various kinds of processing performed by the other mechanisms, it is necessary to simultaneously heat the plurality of semiconductor wafers w by, for example, arranging a plurality of mechanisms vertically. It is preferable to configure so that

In the first coating mechanism 26 and the second coating mechanism 28, the semiconductor wafer w cooled by the cooling mechanism 24
A resist film is formed on the upper surface of the substrate.

FIGS. 1 and 2 specifically show the structure of the transport mechanism 14 shown in FIG.

As shown in each of the drawings, at least two rotary shafts 52 and 54 are provided on the second base 16b which is driven to rotate, at two locations eccentric to the base rotary shaft 50.
The tweezers 18 are attached to the rotating shafts 52 and 54, respectively.
Is the rotation axis 5 so that the plane of the same height is the rotation plane.
One end is set at the same height position of 2, 54 (see FIG. 2). The free end side of each tweezers 18 is
The shape is such that the wafer w can be placed . Preferably ,
It is preferable that the wafer w can be supported with a small contact area such as point contact support at a plurality of places. Further, a stopper that can prevent a position shift during the transfer of the wafer w may be formed by a step or the like . Various conventional modes of support can be applied to support the wafer w.

FIG. 1 shows a state where the wafer w is mounted on at least one of the tweezers 18 and the first base 16a is moved in the X direction. In this state, the tweezers 18 are accommodated so that the occupied space on the first base 16a is minimized. That is, the two tweezers 18 are preferably placed on the first and second bases 16.
a, so as not to protrude outward from the azimuth location on the 16b, and is stopped at the rotation angle position close to a position where both the tweezers 18 and 18 do not interfere.

The movement path 15 of the first base 16a
Wafers w to the processing units 20 to 28 existing on both sides of
When the delivery of the first base 16a is performed,
Independent rotation angles θ2, θ3 of the tweezers 18, 18 together with the direction position and the rotation angle θ1 of the second base 16b.
May be set by, for example, a predetermined program. FIG. 4 shows an example of the control system. In addition to the memory 62 storing the above-mentioned driving programs of the various driving units, the CPU 60 which controls the entire resist coating apparatus also has the X direction of the first base 16a. Linear drive unit 6 that realizes drive
4, a first rotation driving unit 66 for realizing the rotation driving of the second base 16b, and second and third rotation driving units 68, 70 for independently rotating the tweezers 18, 18, respectively.
Is connected. First to third rotation drive units 66 to 70
For example, a servo motor or the like can be applied, or a pulse motor that can realize accurate positioning without a sensor by pulse driving may be employed.

Next, the operation will be described.

The unprocessed wafers w are taken out one from the carrier 42 by the tweezers 38 in the carry-transportable out mechanism 30, is the delivery to one of tweezers 18 of the processing device unit 12 side through the mounting table 40. Then, the operation of extending the tweezers 18 on the side where the wafer w is mounted to the adhesion processing mechanism 20 side may be performed, if necessary, by driving the first base 16a in the X direction and / or rotating the second base 16b. This is realized by rotating the tweezers 18 while interlocking.

Thereafter, the transport mechanism 14 is moved into and out of the loading / unloading mechanism 3.
One of the tweezers 1 with the second wafer w from 0
8 and stand by.

In the adhesion process, the wafer w is heated to, for example, 90 ° C. After the completion of this process, the tweezers 18 on which the second wafer w is not mounted are removed as described above. Adhesion processing mechanism 2
0, and heat-processed wafer w is
Receive at 8. The tweezers 18 on which the heated wafer w is placed are pulled back to the base side, and the tweezers 18 on which the unprocessed wafer w is placed are extended toward the adhesion processing mechanism 20 to replace the wafer w. Realize. As described above, since the transport mechanism 14 has the two tweezers 18 , 18, it is possible to quickly replace the wafer w with the processing unit.

The specific effect of this embodiment is achieved when the wafer w is replaced with the next cooling mechanism 24. Consider a state where the cooling process of the wafer w is completed by the cooling mechanism 22. At this time, the transport mechanism 14
Are waiting on the one of the tweezers 18 after the adhesion processing, that is, the state where the wafer w which has been subjected to the heating processing is mounted. Similarly, the replacement operation of the wafer w with respect to the cooling mechanism 24 is quickly performed in the same manner as the replacement operation with the adhesion processing mechanism 20 described above. In addition, according to the present embodiment, the heated wafer w and the wafer w immediately after the cooling process are temporarily supported by the respective tweezers 18, 18 in the transfer mechanism 14. It is possible to reduce the transmission of heat from w to the wafer w immediately after cooling. That is, If the movement path as in the conventional two tweezers are displaced only in the vertical
In this case , the two wafers overlap each other only in the upper and lower positions, but the two tweezers 18 of this embodiment do not overlap each other at all. In the case of this embodiment, such a situation cannot occur mechanically because the rotating surfaces of the tweezers 18 and 18 are coplanar.

Therefore, the cooled wafer w is
Since the wafer W can be transferred to the resist coating mechanism 26 or 28 without much influence of heat from the heated wafer w, and the resist coating on the wafer w can be realized at an optimum temperature, uniform resist coating is secured and the yield is improved. It can be improved.

The present invention is not limited to the above embodiment, and various modifications can be made within the scope of the present invention.

FIGS. 5 and 6 show the transport mechanism 14 in which the rotating surfaces of the tweezers 18 are different from each other in the upper and lower directions. Such a mechanism replaces the rotating shaft 52 of one tweezers 18 in the above-described embodiment and replaces the rotating shaft 5 of the other tweezers 18.
A rotating shaft 56 that can fix the tweezers 18 at a position higher than 4 may be used. In this case, as shown in FIG. 5, the two tweezers 18, 18 can be set at a completely overlapping position. However, when at least two wafers w having a temperature difference are placed on at least the two tweezers 18, 18, Only so that tweezers 18 and 18 do not overlap,
A control program for the second and third rotation driving units 68 and 70 may be set up. In the embodiments of FIGS. 5 and 6, it is needless to say that the non-overlapping state of FIG. 1 can be realized in a state where the height positions of the tweezers 18 are different.

The present invention is not necessarily applied only to a resist coating apparatus, but can be applied to a transfer apparatus having a plurality of arms for supporting a plurality of plate-like bodies. For example, it is needless to say that the same effect can be obtained when used in a transport system in a manufacturing process of an LCD substrate, a printed board, or the like.

[0036]

As described above, according to the present invention, even if a plurality of plate-like members are simultaneously supported on a plurality of transfer arms, respectively, other plate-like members may be directly below or directly above each plate-like member. The existing overlapping state can be eliminated, and even if there is a temperature difference between the plate-like bodies, the thermal effect between them can be reduced.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a plan view of a transport mechanism in a resist coating apparatus to which the present invention is applied.

FIG. 2 is a side view of FIG.

FIG. 3 is a plan view showing the entire resist coating apparatus including the transport mechanism of FIG. 1;

FIG. 4 is a control system block diagram of the transport mechanism shown in FIG.

FIG. 5 is a plan view of a transport mechanism as a modified example of the present invention, in which the rotating surface height of each tweezer is different.

FIG. 6 is a side view of FIG. 5;

[Explanation of symbols]

16b Base 18 Transfer arm 50 Base rotation axis 52, 54, 56 Transfer arm rotation axis 60 CPU 66 First rotation drive unit 68 Second rotation drive unit 70 Third rotation drive unit
TE032601

Claims (2)

(57) [Claims] At least one end is rotatably supported on at least a rotatable base, and a plurality of locations eccentric from the center of rotation of the base are supported on the base, and the other end can support a plate-like body. A transfer device comprising: a plurality of transfer arms; and control means for independently controlling the rotational drive of the base and the plurality of transfer arms. 2. The plurality of transfer arms according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of transfer arms have a rotation surface on the same plane, and the stop positions of the plurality of transfer arms on the base are predetermined so that the arms do not interfere with each other. A plate-like body transfer device, wherein the plate-like body is set in a state where the rotation angle is shifted.