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Robotically loaded epitaxial deposition apparatus
| Details |
Inventors: Severns, David W.; Tompson, Brian; Lindstrom, Paul R.; Carlson, David K.;
Assignee: Applied Materials, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA)
Primary Examiner: Underwood; Donald W.
Assistant Examiner:
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Morris; Birgit E.
A susceptor carrying semiconductor wafers for processing is suspended from a compliant attachment at its upper end and is lowered into a reaction chamber for processing. At the completion of processing, the susceptor is withdrawn vertically to permit a robot to unload the processed wafers and load unprocessed wafers. In order to fix the position of the susceptor during the loading operations, a support carriage is moved into position to engage the lower end of the susceptor. Noxious and corrosive chloride vapors are simultaneously withdrawn from the reaction chamber by a vacuum line attached to the support carriage. |
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESENT INVENTION In FIG.
1, a graphite susceptor 1 is shown as it would appear during the operation of loading and unloading semiconductor wafers 3.
Susceptor 1 is, for example, an elongated, five-sided support structure having three wafers 3 retained in correspondingly-shaped recesses on each of its sides.
As illustrated, susceptor 1 has a slight axial taper, such that it is larger at the bottom than at the top.
Formed in this way, each of the sides of susceptor 1 slopes in a sense to provide a small radially inward gravitational force component on each of wafers 3 to prevent accidental dislodging of the wafers during processing.
A support hanger 5, in the form of a short stub shaft, connects susceptor 1 to a rotatable support structure 7 which can be raised to the illustrated loading position and lowered to load susceptor 1 into a reaction chamber or bell jar 9 for processing.
During processing within bell jar 9, susceptor 1 and wafers 3 are subjected to temperatures in the region of 1100 to 1200 degrees Celsius in a reactive gaseous environment.
In order to ensure that the mixture of gases in contact with each of the wafers is uniform, susceptor 1 is rotated to agitate and stir the gaseous mixture.
Such stirring action is effective at maintaining a uniform gaseous mixture only if susceptor 1 remains centered such that its axis coincides with the axis of rotation.
Accordingly, support hanger 5 is supported within support structure 7 in a manner which provides considerable compliance, such that susceptor 1 will self-center by gravitational force as will become clearer from the later discussion of FIG.
2.
Loading of unprocessed substrates and unloading of processed ones is carried out by a robotic loader 11 which is illustrated somewhat schematically in FIG.
1.
Loader 11 is equipped with four fingers 13, only two of which are shown in FIG.
1, for gripping each substrate by its edges.
Loader 11 uses a system of infrared sensors (not shown) in order to accurately map the locations of each of the three substrates on each side of susceptor 1
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LCD 
