JP2001196321A - Gas-cooled vertical wafer processing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a gas-cooled vertical wafer processing device which is capable of quickly cooling down a processing tube and wafers by circulating gas inside the processing device. SOLUTION: An oven 1 is provided with a vertical quartz tube 5 which is located at its center and into which wafers 9 are loaded, and a manifold 21 is provided outside the oven 1. Cooling nozzles 11 are extended from the manifold 21 penetrating through the peripheral wall of the oven 1 so as to confront the overall length of the peripheral wall of the quartz tube 5. An exhaust vent 13 is bored in the top wall of the oven 1. The one end of a duct 29 is connected to the exhaust vent 13, and the other end of the duct 29 is connected to the manifold 21 through the intermediary of a heat exchanger 17 and a fan 19 which are both located outside the oven 1 to form a circuit. Gas is circulated between the heat exchanger 17 and the oven 1 by the fan 19, low-temperature gas is made to blow against the overall peripheral wall of the quartz tube 5 from the cooing nozzles 11 to cool down the tube 5 and the wafers 9, and heat is collected from high-temperature gas that returns from the oven 1 by the heat exchanger 17 to turn the returning high-temperature gas to low-temperature cooling gas.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] The present invention relates to a gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus, and more particularly to a gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus capable of rapidly lowering the temperature.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent heat treatment apparatuses for semiconductor wafers, it is required to shorten the processing time in order to improve the throughput, and therefore, it is necessary to rapidly raise and lower the temperature. Also in the film forming process, the tendency of thinning has progressed, and shortening of the processing time has become a demand in the market.

[0003] As for the temperature rise, a high-speed temperature rise of about 100 ° C / min is achieved by supplying a large electric power to the heater. On the other hand, with respect to the temperature drop, several deg. C / min is normal in natural air cooling, and a temperature drop rate of about several tens deg. C / min is obtained by forced cooling.

In the conventional forced cooling, for example, ambient air such as room air in a room where the furnace is installed is introduced into a furnace for heat treatment to air-cool a heater of the heat treatment furnace, and the furnace is exhausted through an exhaust hole of the furnace. It is common to exhaust air outside.

[0005]

When the heater of a furnace is rapidly cooled by room air in a furnace installation room (hereinafter referred to as room air), a large amount of room air needs to be introduced into the furnace. The method that introduces a large amount of room air into the furnace causes a temporary decompression state in the installation room, which breaks the pressure balance with other manufacturing equipment, etc., and consequently lowers product quality. There is.

When the furnace installation room is a clean room or the furnace installation room is in communication with the clean room,
Cooling in the furnace by room air spatially connects the furnace installation room and the furnace heater section. Therefore, there is a problem that particles generated in the heater section in the furnace are scattered in the clean room room, and the surfaces of the apparatus and the wafer are contaminated with the particles.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus in which the temperature is reduced at a high speed by circulating gas in order to solve these problems.

[0008]

Referring to the embodiment of FIG. 1, a gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus according to the present invention comprises:
A furnace 1 having a vertically long quartz tube 5 for loading a wafer 9 at the center, a plurality of cooling nozzles 11 extending from a manifold 21 outside the furnace 1 through the peripheral wall of the furnace 1 and opening toward a full-length peripheral wall of the quartz tube 5, a furnace. Exhaust port 13 opening on the top wall of the furnace 1 and the exhaust port 13 through a heat exchanger 17 and a blower 19 outside the furnace 1.
A gas line 29 connecting the manifold to the manifold 21;
The gas is circulated between the heat exchanger 17 and the furnace 1 by 19, and the low-temperature gas from the heat exchanger 17 is blown by the cooling nozzle 11 onto the entire peripheral wall of the quartz tube 5 to cool the quartz tube 5 and the wafer 9. The high-temperature gas returned from the furnace 1 is converted into a low-temperature gas by collecting heat in the heat exchanger 17.

[0009]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Referring to the embodiment shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, a gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus according to the present invention, which enables high-speed temperature reduction by circulating furnace gas in a wafer processing apparatus. The operation will be described.

A vertically movable boat loader 25 is provided below the housing 23 of the gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus whose main part is shown in FIG. When the boat loader 25 on which the quartz boat 7 is placed is lowered to a lower position indicated by a dotted line in FIG. 3, the wafer 9 is placed on the quartz boat 7 by a transfer machine (not shown). Quartz boat 7 holding wafer 9
Is raised by the boat loader 25 and fitted into the quartz tube 5 in the furnace 1. Wafer 9 heat-treated by furnace 1
Together with the quartz boat 7 and the boat loader 25 move down to the dotted line position, and are transferred to the next-stage processing apparatus by a transfer machine or the like. The clean fan unit 27 performs a function of keeping the plurality of wafers 9 on the lowered quartz boat 7 at a constant temperature.

In the example shown in FIG. 1, a heater device 3 provided in the furnace 1 at a position surrounding the quartz tube 5 heats and processes the quartz tube 5 and the wafer held therein. After the processed wafer 9 is cooled to a predetermined safe temperature,
As described above, the quartz tube 5 is lowered to the lower position shown by the dotted line in FIG. The present invention relates to a rapid temperature drop of the wafer 9 before the drop.

In FIG. 1, a cooling gas cooled by a heat exchanger 17 is blown by a blower 19 through a manifold 21 and a cooling nozzle 11 toward the entire peripheral wall of the quartz tube 5. The temperature of the cooling gas is adjusted by the heat exchanger 17, the air volume is adjusted by the blower 19, and the spray position and the size are adjusted by the number and arrangement of the cooling nozzles 11, whereby the quartz tube 5 and the wafer 9 are rapidly cooled. Or cooled at the required cooling rate.

The present inventor has found that experiments have shown that
It was confirmed that a temperature lowering performance of 10 ° C./min could be provided.

The gas whose temperature has risen by cooling the quartz tube 5 rises in the furnace 1 and returns to the heat exchanger 17 through a gas pipe 29 connected to an exhaust hole 13 opened in the top wall of the furnace 1. . The gas collected and cooled by the cooling water in the heat exchanger 17 flows through the circulation path including the inside of the furnace 1 and the heat exchanger 17 through the above-described path, thereby transferring the heat of the quartz tube 5 to the heat. The quartz tube 5 and the wafer 9 loaded therein are cooled by transferring to a heat source of the exchanger 17, for example, a cooling water source. In FIG. 2, the illustration of instruments and pipes related to the cooling gas is omitted.

In the gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus of the present invention, cooling gas is cooled by flowing the gas for cooling through the circulation path including the inside of the furnace 1 and the heat exchanger 17. Do not use air. Therefore, problems such as the imbalance in pressure with other manufacturing equipment due to the temporary decompression state due to the use of indoor air in the prior art, the deterioration of product quality, and the scattering of particles generated in the furnace into the clean room are caused. Can be solved.

In this manner, the object of the present invention is to provide a "gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus capable of rapidly lowering the temperature by circulating a cooling gas".

[0017]

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, a heater device 3 is provided between the peripheral wall of the furnace 1 and the quartz tube 5, and a cooling nozzle 11 penetrates both the peripheral wall of the furnace 1 and the heater device 3 to form a quartz tube. 5 is facing. The cooling nozzle 11 having such a structure is advantageous for high-speed cooling of the quartz tube 5, but the present invention is not limited to this example.

Further, in the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, the discharge side of the blower 19 and the outlet side of the exhaust port 13 on the top wall of the furnace 1 are connected to the gas line 29 by the valve 31.
The low-temperature gas flow into the furnace 1 is controlled by adjusting the opening of the valve 31. That is, the valve 31 in FIG. With this configuration, the flow rate of the cooling gas to the furnace 1 can be controlled while keeping the supply amount of the cooling water to the heat exchanger 17 and the discharge air amount of the blower 19 constant.

As the cooling gas, air can be used, but a gas such as nitrogen or argon having high cooling efficiency may be used.

[0020]

As described in detail above, the gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus of the present invention performs the high-speed cooling by the cooling gas circulating in the wafer processing apparatus, and thus has the following remarkable effects.

(A) It is possible to perform high-speed temperature reduction without requiring external air and without disturbing other devices. (B) Even if the cooling gas is an expensive gas other than air, it is not exhausted at the time of operation, so the consumption is small and economical, and the cooling gas can be used efficiently. (C) There is no need for connection work with the exhaust holes of the facility.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a main part of a gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of a boat loader used in the apparatus of FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Furnace 3 ... Heater device 5 ... Quartz tube 7 ... Quartz boat 9 ... Wafer 11 ... Cooling nozzle 13 ... Exhaust hole 15 ... Flow control unit 17 ... Heat exchanger 19 ... Blower 21 ... Manifold 23 ... Housing 25 ... Boat loader 27… Clean fan unit 29… Gas line 31… Valve 33… Branch line

 ────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continued from the front page (72) Inventor Satoshi Oka 3-20-8 Narita Nishi, Suginami-ku, Tokyo Okura Electric Co., Ltd. F term (reference) 5F045 BB08 DP19 DQ05 EB02 EJ04 EJ10 EK06 EM10

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. A furnace having a vertically elongated quartz tube for loading a wafer at a center thereof, a plurality of cooling nozzles extending from a manifold outside the furnace through a peripheral wall of the furnace and opening toward a peripheral wall of the entire length of the quartz tube; An exhaust port opening on the top wall, and a gas pipe connecting the exhaust port to a manifold via a heat exchanger and a blower outside the furnace, and the blower is provided between the heat exchanger and the furnace. The gas is circulated, the low-temperature gas from the heat exchanger is sprayed on the peripheral wall of the entire length of the quartz tube by the cooling nozzle to cool the quartz tube and the wafer, and the high-temperature gas returned from the furnace is collected in the heat exchanger. A gas-cooled vertical wafer processing system that generates low-temperature gas by heat. 2. The wafer processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the discharge side of the blower of the gas line and the outlet side of the opening of the furnace top wall are connected by a branch line with a valve, and the degree of opening of the valve is adjusted. A gas-cooled vertical wafer processing system that controls the flow rate of low-temperature gas into the furnace by using 3. A gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said gas is nitrogen or argon. 4. A wafer processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a heater device is provided between the peripheral wall of the furnace and the quartz tube, and the cooling nozzle is moved from a manifold outside the furnace to the peripheral wall of the furnace. A gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus desirably penetrating a heater device and surrounding the entire length of the quartz tube. 5. A wafer processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a wafer is loaded into said quartz tube.
A gas-cooled vertical wafer processing apparatus, which is carried out by a quartz boat that can be lifted and lowered from below into the quartz tube.