JPS63234511A - Semiconductor substrate treatment device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make it possible to discover the cracks of the wafer being treated and the replacement of a carrier by a method wherein the number of substrates in a substrate housing case is counted in front and rear of a treatment device, and the number of substrates counted before and after treatment is compared and checked up. CONSTITUTION:The number of wafers in the carrier 2 set on a loader 1 is counted by a CCD camera 3, and the counted data are sent to a comparating part 9. Then, the number of the wafers in the carrier 2 passed through a treatment part 5 is counted by a CCD camera 7, and it is compared and checked up with the data on the loader 1 by the comparing part 9. Then, when a difference is generated in the number of wafers before and after treatment, the driving of the device is controlled by a controller 4 based on the signal sent from the comparing part 9. As a result, the trouble such as the cracks on the wafer and the replacement of the carrier can be coped with.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a semiconductor substrate in which semiconductor substrates (hereinafter referred to as wafers) are simultaneously processed in units of semiconductor substrate storage boxes (hereinafter referred to as carriers) in the semiconductor integrated circuit manufacturing process. It relates to a processing device.

[Conventional technology]

Some semiconductor substrate processing apparatuses of this type have a structure in which a plurality of wafers are stored in a carrier, the wafers are carried into a processing section, and the plurality of wafers are simultaneously processed in units of carriers.

Conventionally, in the above-described semiconductor substrate processing apparatus, the actual situation is that the number of wafers is not particularly managed before and after processing.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

For this reason, during processing, some wafers in the carrier may break and the processing continues without realizing that the equipment is contaminated, which may cause defects, or even if the carrier is replaced during processing, the user may not notice. There was a drawback that there was no

An object of the present invention is to provide a semiconductor substrate processing apparatus having a wafer number management function.

[Means for solving problems]

The present invention provides a semiconductor substrate processing apparatus equipped with a processing section that simultaneously processes semiconductor substrates in each semiconductor substrate storage box.
A counter that counts the number of semiconductor substrates stored in a semiconductor substrate storage box before and after the processing section compares and collates the number of semiconductor substrates counted by the counter before and after processing, and outputs a signal for number management. A semiconductor substrate processing apparatus is characterized in that it has a comparison section that performs the following steps.

〔Example〕

Hereinafter, one embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the main parts of a semiconductor substrate processing apparatus according to the present invention.

In FIG. 1, 5 is a processing section that simultaneously processes a plurality of semiconductor substrates in carrier units.
In addition to installing the loader 1 to carry the carrier 2,
An unloader for unloading the carrier is provided after the processing section 5.
Install 6. Furthermore, CCD cameras 3 and 7 as counters for counting the number of wafers 8 in the carrier 2 are provided at the front and rear stages of the processing section 5, respectively, and two CCD cameras
A comparator 9 is provided for comparing and collating the number of wafers output from the cameras 3 and 7 and outputting a signal for managing the number of wafers. 4 is a controller.

As shown in FIG. 1, the number of wafers in a carrier 2 set in a loader 1 is counted by a CCD camera 3. The counted data is sent to the comparison section 9.

Thereafter, the number of wafers in the carrier 2 that have passed through the processing section 5 is counted by the CCD camera 7, and compared with the data from the loader 1 by the comparison section 9. If there is a difference in the number of wafers 1- before and after processing, the controller 4 controls the drive of the apparatus based on the signal from the comparison section 9 to deal with accidents such as cracking of wafers or replacement of carriers.

In the present invention, a CCD camera is used to count the number of sheets, but other counting methods may be used.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, the present invention counts the number of wafers in the carrier before and after processing, and by comparing and collating the numbers, it is possible to detect cracks in wafers or replacement of carriers during processing, thereby preventing contamination of equipment or damage to carriers. This has the effect of preventing product defects due to product replacement.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the present invention.

Claims (1)

[Claims] (1) In a semiconductor substrate processing apparatus equipped with a processing section that simultaneously processes semiconductor substrates in each semiconductor substrate storage box, a counter that counts the number of semiconductor substrates stored in the semiconductor substrate storage boxes before and after the processing section. and a comparison unit that compares and collates the number of semiconductor substrates before and after processing counted by the counter and outputs a number management signal.