JP2529559B2 - Substrate processing equipment - Google Patents

Description

Description: TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to a wafer blower for performing a functional inspection of a substrate processing apparatus such as a semiconductor chip, and in particular, has improved versatility so that it can be used both offline and inline. The present invention relates to a substrate processing apparatus.

[Prior Art] A wafer blower is an apparatus used for measuring the characteristics of a large number of IC chips formed on a semiconductor wafer in a wafer state before cutting and packaging. The actual test is performed by the IC tester,
The wafer blower is a device for electrically and accurately contacting this IC tester with each IC chip on the wafer.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] However, conventionally, this type of apparatus has been configured exclusively for offline or inline, and switching from offline to inline or vice versa has been complicated and not easy.

Here, the offline means that the operator can independently carry and process the wafer carrier and the wafer, or can perform its own processing independently by an unmanned apparatus, and the inline is connected to the exposure apparatus and the developing apparatus. This means that the wafers are processed consistently.

The present invention has been made to eliminate the above-mentioned drawbacks of the prior art, and an object of the present invention is to provide a substrate processing apparatus such as a wafer prober that can be easily adapted to off-line and in-line processing.

[Means and Actions for Solving Problems] In order to solve the above problems, according to the present invention, in a substrate processing apparatus, as a means for supplying an unprocessed substrate and delivering a processed substrate, mounting and removal of a carrier are performed. In addition to the means for performing the above, both means for receiving the substrate from the external transport path are provided.

When a substrate is received from the external transport path, the substrate is temporarily stored in the carrier as a substrate to be processed, or is directly delivered to the substrate processing unit only when there is no substrate to be processed.

[Examples] Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail based on Examples.

FIG. 1 shows a schematic configuration diagram of a wafer prober according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the figure, reference numerals 1 and 1'indicate a wafer carrier entrance / exit, 2 a wafer carrier table having a slide mechanism for carrier exchange, 3 a wafer carrier, 4 an observation station for placing a wafer when visually observing a wafer that has been propped, and 5 an observation station. Wafer in a state, 6 is an operation panel, 7 is a pre-alignment station for rough alignment of the wafer, 8 is a wafer being pre-aligned, 10 is a wafer chuck for holding the wafer by vacuum, 11 is a wafer in a waiting state for measurement, and 12 is a wafer. A head plate holding a probe card (not shown) inside, 13 is a stereoscopic microscope used when setting the probe card, and 14 is a reference image used for parameter display and automatic alignment set on the wafer prober (hereinafter referred to as template). Monitor) that uses settings such as), 90 is for inlining Is a wafer carry-in port.

FIG. 2 is a schematic view of the inside of the wafer prober shown in FIG. In the figure, 15 is a pantograph hand capable of pulling out or inserting a wafer from an arbitrary position of the wafer carrier 3,
Reference numeral 16 is a pantograph hand up-and-down mechanism portion for vertically moving the pantograph hand, 17 is a carry-in hand for carrying a wafer from the pre-alignment station 7 to the wafer chuck 10, and 18
Is a θZ stage that rotates the wafer chuck 10 or drives it in the height direction, 19 and 20 are X and Y stages, respectively, and 21 is a capacitance type that measures the outer circumference of the wafer and the height of the surface of the wafer. The sensor 22 is an auto-alignment microscope that captures a pattern on the wafer surface for automatic wafer alignment (hereinafter referred to as auto-alignment).

FIG. 3 is a schematic view of the outer appearance of the wafer blower of FIG. 1, where 30 is a flat keyboard used for setting parameters and the like, and 31 and 32 are transparent covers. The flat keyboard 30 also serves as a cover, and the transparent covers 31 and 32 may also serve as a keyboard.

FIG. 4 is a side sectional view of the pantograph hand 15 shown in FIG. In the figure, 3 is a wafer carrier, 60 is a wafer,
70 is a semiconductor laser with a collimator used as a light source for detecting the presence or absence of the wafer and measuring the position of the wafer, and 71 is a plane mirror
Reference numeral 73 is a photodetector for detecting the laser light reflected by 73, 72 is a half mirror, 74 is a telescopic drive unit of the pantograph hand 15, and 75 is a rotary drive unit that rotates the entire pantograph hand 15.

5 and 6 are top views of the pantograph hand 15, showing the extended state and the contracted state of the pantograph hand 15 by the operation of the expansion / contraction driving unit 74, respectively. The reference numerals are the same as in FIG.

FIG. 7 is a schematic view around the pre-alignment station. In the figure, 80 is a linear pulse motor for moving the carry-in hand 17 in the Y-axis direction, 81 is a scale serving as a stator of the linear pulse motor, 82 is a carry-in hand vertical drive unit for moving the carry-in hand up and down, and 83 is a wafer for pre-alignment. Wafer sensor for detecting the outer shape of the wafer from the back side,
Reference numeral 84 is a pantograph hand finger, 85 is a wafer rotation mechanism unit for pre-alignment for rotating the wafer during pre-alignment, and 86 is a wafer chuck pin for lifting the wafer from the wafer chuck.

8 and 9 are views for explaining the pre-alignment operation. FIG. 8 shows a state in which the outer shape of the wafer on the pantograph hand 15 is detected by the wafer sensor 83, and FIG. 9 shows pre-alignment at the pre-alignment station 7. It is a figure which shows an execution state.

The operation of the wafer prober having the above structure will be described below.

 First, the setting of the wafer carrier 3 will be described.

Referring to FIG. 1, a carrier set switch (not shown) on operation panel 6 is pressed to set wafer carrier 3. As a result, the wafer carrier stand 2 comes out from the wafer carrier entrance / exit 1 on the front side of the apparatus.
In this embodiment, the wafer carrier table 2 is moved by a linear pulse motor. Although FIG. 1 shows a state in which the wafer carrier table 2 on the left side is projected,
The wafer carrier base 2 on the right side can also move in the same manner. After the wafer carrier 3 is set on the wafer carrier table 2, the carrier set switch is pushed again to move the wafer carrier table 2 into the apparatus, and in this state, the apparatus is in a start waiting state.

 Next, the probe test operation will be described.

When the start switch of the operation panel 6 is pressed in the start waiting state, the pantograph hand 15 remains in the contracted state (see FIG. 6) and faces the designated wafer carrier, and the pantograph hand up-and-down mechanism 16 is used. Move from top to bottom. Pantograph hand
As shown in FIG. 4, reference numeral 15 has a semiconductor laser 70 for wafer sensing and a photodetector 71 therein, which makes it possible to detect the presence or absence of a wafer in a wafer carrier and its accurate position. Has become. With such a function, the pantograph hand 15 can pull out the wafer 60 from an arbitrary position in the wafer carrier 3. A state in which the wafer 60 is pulled out from the wafer carrier 3 is shown in FIGS.

The pantograph hand 15 moves from the wafer carrier 3 to the wafer.
After pulling out 60, it is raised by the pantograph hand up-and-down mechanism section 16 and further rotated by the pantograph hand rotation drive section 15 to position the wafer above the pre-alignment station 7 as shown in FIG. At this time, instead of raising the pantograph hand 15, the carrier 3 may be lowered. The pre-alignment station can also be set below the carrier 3.

Here, the pre-alignment operation will be described with reference to FIGS.

When the wafer on the pantograph hand finger 84 is positioned on the pre-alignment station 7, the wafer sensor
The carry-in hand 17 having 83 starts scanning below this wafer (below the pantograph hand fingers 84). During this scan, the wafer sensor 83 senses the peripheral portion of the wafer on the pantograph hand finger 84 and obtains data on the peripheral position of the wafer in the Y-axis direction. Thereafter, the pantograph hand 15 is expanded and contracted in the X-axis direction shown in FIG. 7, and the peripheral portion is sensed in the same manner as above to detect the outer peripheral position of the wafer in the X-axis direction. This is shown in FIG. After this,
The wafer center position is obtained from the wafer outer peripheral position data obtained as described above, and the pantograph hand 15 of the pantograph hand 15 is adjusted so that this center coincides with the center of the pre-alignment wafer rotating mechanism 85 in the X-axis direction shown in FIG. The expansion / contraction state is set, and then the pantograph hand 15 is lowered to transfer the wafer to the wafer rotation mechanism section 85. Before this operation, the carry-in hand 17 is moved to the position shown in FIG. The pantograph hand 15 moves the wafer to the wafer rotation mechanism section 85 and then contracts as shown in FIG. 9 to complete the wafer loading operation to the pre-alignment station 7.

In the above description, the auto-loading in the full-automatic operation, which is the main operation of the wafer prober of the present embodiment, has been described. However, this wafer prober enables extremely easy and high-speed loading and unloading of the wafer by the manual operation. There is. In the case of manual operation in this embodiment, wafer loading is performed by raising the flat keyboard 30 on the right front side of the apparatus shown in FIG. 3, and placing it on the pre-alignment wafer rotating mechanism section 85 on the pre-alignment station 7 located below this. All you have to do is place the wafer. At this time, the carry-in hand 17 is located at the pre-alignment station as shown in FIG.

When the wafer is placed automatically or manually, the wafer rotation mechanism unit 85 vacuum-adsorbs the wafer and starts the rotation operation. If the mounted wafer is not a cracked wafer or a deformed wafer, the wafer is rotated by the wafer rotating mechanism unit 85, and at this time, the carry-in hand 17 traces the outer circumference of this wafer by the operation of the linear pulse motor 80, and thus the orientation is improved. The flat part is detected. Then, the wafer rotation mechanism unit 85 directs the orientation flat portion of the wafer in a predetermined direction.

If the center position of the wafer passed from the pantograph hand 15 to the rotation mechanism unit 85 has a large error in the Y-axis direction shown in FIG. 7 with respect to the center of the wafer rotation mechanism unit 85, the wafer rotation mechanism Hand 17 for loading wafer on section 85
This error can be removed by lifting again, moving in the Y-axis direction so as to correct this error, and then lowering it on the wafer rotation mechanism section 85 again. By such an operation, the center of the wafer can be made to coincide with the rotation center of the wafer rotating mechanism unit 85, and more stable rotation can be performed, and the wafer sensor 83 detects the above-mentioned orientation flat portion. Can be performed easily, at higher speed and with higher accuracy.

In this embodiment, a reflection type optical sensor is used as the wafer sensor 83, but a transmission type optical sensor, a capacitance type sensor or the like may be used.

When the detection of the orientation flat portion on the wafer rotating mechanism portion 85 is completed, the wafer is further rotated so that the orientation flat portion faces in the designated direction, and then lifted from the pre-alignment station 7 by the carry-in hand 17, and The wafer is loaded onto the wafer chuck 10 waiting at the position shown in the figure.

The wafer chuck 10 has three wafer chuck pins 86 that can project from the surface thereof, and when the wafer is received from the carry-in hand 17, the wafer chuck pins 86 are projected from the wafer chuck. In this state, carry-in hand 17
Is lowered by the carry-in hand vertical drive unit 82, whereby the wafer on the carry-in hand 17 is transferred onto the wafer chuck pins 86 protruding from the wafer chuck 10. After this,
The carry-in hand 17 returns to the pre-alignment station 7 side, and the wafer chuck pins 86 protruding from the wafer chuck 10 are lowered, so that the wafer is transferred onto the wafer chuck 10 and fixed by vacuum suction.

In this embodiment, the wafer chuck pins 86 are projected from the wafer chuck 10 when the wafer is loaded,
Wafer chuck pin 86 is fixed and the wafer chuck is
Even if 10 is lowered, the same movement as in the present embodiment is possible.

Here, the operation after the wafer is transferred onto the wafer chuck 10 on the XY stages 19 and 20 will be described with reference to FIG.

When the wafer is transferred onto the wafer chuck 10, the wafer chuck 10 performs a scanning operation under the electrostatic capacitance type sensor 21 to detect the outer peripheral position of the wafer, and more accurately aligns the orientation flat portion. Measure the center of.

The orientation of the orientation flat portion at this position is performed by rotating the θZ stage 18 by θ. After the more accurate pre-alignment described above, the wafer chuck 10 again performs the scanning operation under the capacitance type sensor 21 to detect the height direction of the wafer surface. This detection in the height direction is to obtain correction data for keeping the contact pressure between the probe needle of the probe card and the wafer constant at all positions on the wafer.

After that, the wafer chuck 10 moves so that a predetermined position on the wafer is located below the auto-alignment microscope 22. At this position, the template on the wafer stored in advance is compared with the pattern observed by the auto-alignment microscope 22 when the wafer is actually placed at this position, and the pattern of the wafer on the chuck is determined. It is detected how far from a predetermined position there is an error in the XY directions.

The error detection in the XY directions is automatically performed by an error position detection device (not shown) by pattern matching in the lower part of the device. This operation is similarly performed at another predetermined position on the wafer to detect an error in the θ direction.

As described above, the X-, Y-, and θ-direction errors of the pattern on the wafer are calculated from the error detection in the two XY-directions, and the θ-component error is corrected by rotating the wafer chuck 10. The correction drive of the XY stage is performed so as to remove this error component during probing.

When the correction operation of the θ component error and the detection of the XY component error are completed under the auto alignment microscope 22, the probe card (the first IC chip on the wafer (hereinafter referred to as the first chip)) fixed to the head plate 12 ( (Not shown). This operation is the XY stage 19,2
This is performed by 0. At this time, the XY component error detected during the automatic alignment is also corrected at the same time as described above. After the first chip moves under the probe card, the Z chuck of the θZ stage 18 moves the wafer chuck.
10 moves up by a predetermined stroke to make contact between the bonding pad of the IC chip on the wafer and the probe needle of the probe card. In this state, when the wafer prober sends a tester start signal to an external tester (not shown), the tester starts testing this IC chip. If the result of this test determines that the IC chip is non-defective, the tester sends a test end signal to the wafer prober. When this IC chip is determined to be defective, the tester sends a test end signal and a signal indicating failure. At the time of receiving this test end signal, the wafer prober determines whether this IC chip is good or bad depending on whether or not a signal indicating a failure is received.
Mark the tip.

When a series of operations for inspecting the first chip is completed as described above, the XY stages 19 and 20 are moved to sequentially place uninspected IC chips under the probe card and perform the same processing as the first chip.

When the test of all IC chips on the wafer is completed, the wafer chuck 10 returns to the initial position shown in FIG. 2, and the vacuum suction is stopped so that the three wafer chuck pins 86 are projected from the wafer chuck 10 and the wafer chuck 10 is lifted. Lift from the wafer chuck 10. In this state, the pantograph hand 15 faces the direction of the wafer chuck 10 shown in FIG. 2 in a contracted state, and the pantograph hand 15 is further extended to insert the pantograph hand finger 84 between the wafer chuck 10 and the wafer. This wafer is recovered from the wafer chuck 10 by retracting the pantograph hand 15 slightly and then contracting.

If the observation mode is set, the pantograph hand 15 transfers the wafer to the observation station 4 and further collects the wafer from the observation station 4 after a preset time or after a manual instruction to store the wafer,
If the observation mode is not set, the wafer in the wafer carrier 3 is directly returned to the position before the inspection.

During the probing operation of the wafer on the wafer chuck 10, the next wafer is pulled out of the wafer carrier 3 by the pantograph hand 15 and delivered to the pre-alignment station 7. After that, the pre-alignment station 7 performs the same pre-alignment operation as described above. That is, when the wafer is unloaded from the wafer chuck 10, the next wafer is waiting in the pre-alignment station 7 in the pre-alignment completed state.
The next wafer is loaded into the wafer chuck 10 without wasting time for pre-alignment or the like.

When the test of all the wafers in one wafer carrier is completed by the above operation, the carrier set switch (not shown) on the operation panel 6 becomes the blinking state to notify the operator that the wafer test of one wafer carrier is completed. . If the operator pushes the carrier set switch in this state, the wafer carrier table 2 comes out to the front so that the wafer carrier can be easily removed and replaced. If the wafer carrier containing the wafer to be tested is set on the other wafer carrier table 2 while the operator is waiting for the carrier replacement, the wafer prober performs the above-mentioned probe test operation on the wafers in this wafer carrier. Automatically.

FIGS. 10 and 11 show an example in which this device can be used for in-line installation in a factory. In the figure, reference numeral 23 is a carry-in truck for receiving a wafer from the outside, and 24 is a carry-out truck for sending a wafer to the outside. The loading and unloading trucks 23, 24 are loaded into the loading port 90 below the stations 7, 4 and above the carrier, respectively. Reference numerals 61 and 62 denote a carry-in wafer and a carry-out wafer.

In this case, the wafer 61 is taken into the main body from outside the apparatus by blowing air from the small holes 23a of the carry-in truck 23. This wafer is temporarily stopped below the pre-alignment station 7 shown in FIG. Next, when it is detected that the wafer 61 has come here, the panter hand 15 conveys this wafer to the upper pre-alignment station 7, and shifts to the pre-alignment operation. However, if there are still wafers remaining on the pre-alignment station 7 or if there are still some wafers waiting for measurement in the input buffer carrier 3 ', this loading track
The wafer on 23 is temporarily stored in the vacant portion in the input buffer carrier 3'by the panter hand 15. Then, after waiting for the turn, they are conveyed onto the pre-alignment station 7 in the same manner as in the case of offline. The carrier 3'is the same as that in the case of the offline shown in FIG. 2, and is shared both in the case of the offline and the case of the online.
The output buffer carrier 3 is also shared.

Thereafter, the wafer is subjected to a process such as a chip test in the same procedure as described above, and after the process is completed, it is stored in the output buffer carrier 3. An arbitrary wafer in the output buffer carrier 3 is placed on the carry-out track 24 by the pantograph hand 15 in response to a request from the outside and sent to the outside.

As described above, the wafer processing apparatus according to this embodiment has the following effects.

1) An input buffer carrier, an output buffer carrier, and a wafer hand, which is a wafer transfer means, are arranged on the front surface of the main body of the wafer processing apparatus, and the wafer carry-in / carry-out position is the upper part of the buffer carrier, and the upper part thereof. Since the pre-alignment mechanism section and the observing section are arranged in the above, the apparatus main body can be made extremely small.

2) Since the wafer carry-in and carry-out positions are on the left and right of the main body of the device, there is a large degree of freedom in the arrangement for the in-line configuration in the factory.

3) Since it has all the functions required for an offline device, it can be immediately switched to offline.

4) Not limited to a prober, it is suitable for various wafer processing apparatuses such as exposure, development, and resist formation.

[Effects of the Invention] As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to provide a versatile substrate processing apparatus capable of immediately and easily supporting both online and inline processing modes.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a wafer prober according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is an internal schematic diagram of the wafer prober of FIG. 1, and FIG. 3 is an external appearance schematic of the wafer prober of FIG. FIGS. 4 to 6 are explanatory views of the structure and operation of the pantograph hand in FIG. 2, FIG. 7 is a schematic perspective view of the pre-alignment station in FIG. 2, and FIGS. 8 and 9 are FIG. Operation explanatory diagram of the pre-alignment station, FIGS. 10 and 11 are example diagrams corresponding to in-line in-plant. 1, 1 ': Wafer carrier inlet, 2: Wafer carrier stand, 3: Wafer carrier, 6: Operation panel, 12: Head plate, 15: Pantograph hand, 16: Pantograph hand up / down mechanism, 23: Carry-in truck, 24: Carry out Track, 60: wafer, 61: carry-in wafer, 62: carry-out wafer, 74: pantograph hand extension drive unit, 75: pantograph hand rotation drive unit.

Claims (5)

(57) [Claims] 1. A substrate processing unit, a substrate carrier for supplying a substrate to the substrate processing unit, and a carrier exchange mechanism for moving the substrate carrier between a substrate carrier conversion position and a substrate supply position. A substrate transfer means for transferring a substrate between the substrate carrier at the substrate supply position and the substrate processing section, and a substrate transferred on an external transfer path are housed in the substrate carrier at the substrate supply position or A substrate processing apparatus comprising: a storage / delivery unit that directly delivers the substrate to a substrate processing unit. 2. The substrate processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the storage / delivery means includes a pantograph type hand. 3. The substrate processing apparatus according to claim 2, further comprising means for delivering the substrate processed by the substrate processing section to an external transport path. 4. The substrate processing apparatus according to claim 3, wherein the means for delivering to the external transport path includes the pantograph type hand. 5. The substrate processing apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the pantograph type hand also serves as the substrate delivery means.