JP2971525B2 - Vacuum processing equipment - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Object of the Invention] (Industrial application field) The present invention relates to a vacuum processing apparatus having a support member for supporting an object to be processed in a chamber.

(Prior Art) Examples of this type of vacuum processing apparatus include a vapor deposition apparatus, an ion plating apparatus, and a CVD apparatus.
In this type of apparatus, the object to be processed is supported and rotated inside the vacuum processing chamber in order to uniformly coat the object to be processed.

In the case of a vapor deposition apparatus, for example, a vapor deposition source provided on the bottom surface side of a container is heated, and vapor deposition is performed on an object to be processed on the upper side thereof to perform vapor deposition. Therefore, in order to perform the vapor deposition process on all surfaces of the object to be processed, it is indispensable to relatively rotate the object to be processed or the deposition source.

Furthermore, in order to increase the processing throughput, batch processing for processing a plurality of objects at once is effective.
The number of axes that support and rotate the object to be processed tends to increase,
Further, it is necessary to rotate each axis and revolve.

Thus, the rotation mechanism disposed inside the vacuum processing chamber tends to be more complicated.

(Problems to be Solved by the Invention) In the above-described vacuum processing chamber, it is necessary to evacuate the inside of the processing chamber when performing the processing. A start-up time for setting the interior of the room to a predetermined degree of vacuum is required. The evacuation start-up time may be prolonged as the rotation mechanism becomes more complicated.

That is, when the capacity of the vacuum chamber is increased to perform batch processing of a large number of sheets, a high-performance vacuum pump may be arranged in accordance with the vacuum vessel. When the surrounding exhausted part becomes complicated in a maze shape, and vacuum is drawn along such a maze, efficient vacuuming cannot be realized. In particular, in this type of apparatus, the rotation mechanism may be separated from the room in which the object is placed by a protective cover or the like in order to prevent the reaction mechanism from being contaminated by the reaction product or the like. Will be further promoted. For this reason, particularly, a long start-up time is required until the portion to be evacuated near the rotating mechanism reaches a predetermined degree of vacuum.

The present invention has been made in view of such a point, and an object of the present invention is to efficiently perform evacuation of a complicated exhausted portion in the vicinity of the complicated rotating mechanism even if the rotating mechanism is complicated, thereby achieving a vacuum. An object of the present invention is to increase the operation rate of the apparatus by shortening the start-up time and improve the throughput.

[Configuration of the invention]

(Means for Solving the Problems) In order to achieve the above object, according to the present invention, a support member for supporting an object to be processed is provided in a chamber capable of being evacuated through a vacuum port communicating with an evacuation unit. In the vacuum processing apparatus, a housing communicating with the chamber is provided on the bottom side of the chamber, and a rotation mechanism for driving the support member is disposed in the housing. A vacuum processing apparatus is provided, wherein a communicating exhaust hole is formed, and a preliminary vacuum port for evacuating the atmosphere near the rotating mechanism is connected to the exhaust hole.

(Operation) According to the above configuration, most of the area of the chamber is evacuated through the main vacuum port as in the past, but other areas, that is, complicated exhausted parts near the rotating mechanism, are not evacuated. The evacuation can be realized through a preliminary vacuum port arranged in the vicinity. In this case, since the exhaust path distance to the auxiliary vacuum port is much shorter than the exhaust path distance to the main vacuum port, efficient exhaust can be realized in the exhausted portion near the rotating mechanism, and the entire chamber can be defined. The startup time for setting the degree of vacuum can be significantly reduced. It is also possible to prevent dust and the like near the rotation mechanism from flowing into the chamber.

(Example) Hereinafter, an example in which the present invention is applied to an industrial vapor deposition apparatus will be specifically described with reference to the drawings.

As shown in FIG. 4, this vapor deposition apparatus has a housing 10 having an exhaust system and a rotation mechanism system, which will be described later, on the back side. A chamber 14 that can move in the direction is provided. Further, the internal space of the chamber 14 is configured as a deposition processing chamber 14a. A boat (not shown) containing a deposition material is arranged on the bottom side of the evaporation processing chamber 14a, and a heating source for heating the boat is arranged.

The casing 10 is provided with a disc-shaped base plate 16.
A 0 mm main vacuum port 18 is located. And
After the end surface of the chamber 14 comes into contact with the base plate 16, the inside of the chamber 14 can be evacuated via the main vacuum port 18.

The left and right sides of the lower area of the base plate 16 have flanges.
55, 55 are provided. On each of the flanges 55, for example, 2 to 20 deposition object support shafts 20 are arranged, and each of the deposition object support shafts 20 can be driven to revolve integrally in the direction of arrow B in FIG. The support shaft 20 can be rotated in the direction of arrow C in FIG. In addition, the above-mentioned deposit support shaft 20
Is, for example, a diameter of 20 to 200 mm, is configured with a length of 1 to 4 m, for example, can be inserted and supported 2 to 40 to-be-deposited object having a length of 10 to 50 cm on one deposited object support shaft 20, In this deposition apparatus in which two sets of 2 to 20 deposition support shafts 20 are arranged, 8 to 1600 depositions can be batch-processed at one time.

The vapor deposition in the vapor deposition chamber 14a is performed in the following procedure. First, the inside of the deposition processing chamber 14a is evacuated to a molecular flow region, for example, about 1 × 10 ⁻⁴ Torr, and the deposition material and the like in the boat disposed below the deposition support shaft 20 are heated to 200 ° C.
Heat to ~ 600 ° C. Then, it will go straight and adhere to the surface of the object to be deposited. This is performed while the object to be deposited is revolving and rotating, whereby a uniform evaporation film can be formed on the drum surface of the object to be evaporated. Note that the object to be deposited, which is the object to be processed, can be heated to, for example, about 50 to 300 ° C. to achieve more uniform film formation and improvement in film quality.

Next, a rotation mechanism that is disposed on the back side of the housing 10 to revolve and rotate the deposition object support shaft 20 and an exhaust system of an exhaust portion around the rotation mechanism will be described with reference to FIG.
This will be described with reference to FIG.

To fix this rotation mechanism, a cylindrical housing 22 is used.
The housing 22 is provided with the base plate 16.
And the flange 55 is fixed to the opening end side. An exhaust hole 22a is formed at one location on the peripheral surface of the housing 22, and a flange of a preliminary vacuum port 24 is screwed and fixed to the exhaust hole 22a. Mainly, the inner diameter of the auxiliary vacuum port 24 is, for example, 100 mm.

Inside the housing 22, a revolution driving cylinder 26 is arranged. A large number of communication holes 26a penetrating from the outer wall to the inner wall are formed on the peripheral surface of the revolving drive cylinder 26. The revolving drive cylinder 26 is connected to the housing
It is rotatably supported by a revolving bearing 28 via a revolving bearing 28, and a revolving shaft 27 is fixed to one end thereof. In addition, between the housing 22 and the orbiting drive cylinder 26, an orbiting portion sealing material 30 constituted by, for example, filling a magnetic fluid, an elastomer or the like is disposed. The upper region is secured as a vacuum region.

A rotation shaft support cylinder 32 is fixed to the revolution drive cylinder 26. The rotation shaft supporting cylinder 32 is arranged along the circumferential direction of the orbital driving cylinder 26 as shown in FIG. They are arranged at equal intervals in 2 to 20 places. A rotation shaft 34 is inserted and supported inside each rotation shaft support cylindrical body 32, and one end of the rotation shaft 34 is fixedly screwed to the deposition object support shaft 20. The rotation shaft 34 is rotatably supported on the rotation shaft supporting cylinder 32 via a rotation bearing 36, and is rotated by a rotation portion sealing material 38 such as a magnetic fluid or an elastomer. Vacuum sealed in the lower area.

In a region where the rotation mechanism protrudes from the flange 55 toward the chamber 14, there is a possibility that these may be contaminated by the wraparound of the deposit. Therefore, the apparatus of this embodiment is provided with a contamination protection cover as shown in FIG. The first contamination protection cover 40 covers the peripheral surface of the rotation shaft 34 and the rotation shaft supporting cylinder 32 and the surface of the flange 55, and in particular, protects the rotation bearing 36 from deposits. is there.
The second pollution protection cover 42 is the first pollution protection cover.
40, and the contamination protection area is further expanded to the vicinity of the connection portion with the deposition object support shaft 20 and the rotation shaft 34. The third contamination protection cover 44 is provided on the first and second protection covers 40 and 4 which are arranged near the surface of the flange 55 in an overlapping manner.
2, and is arranged to cover the connection between the flange 55 and the housing 22 and the connection between the housing 22 and the base plate 16. These various protective covers 40, 42, 44
Are appropriately screwed and fixed so as to secure each protection area.

In the present embodiment, the chamber 14 is
Of course, the vapor deposition processing chamber 14a formed in the chamber 14 is evacuated by close contact, but since the back side of the flange 55 is also in communication with the vapor deposition chamber 14a, the back side of this flange 55 It is necessary to evacuate the part to be evacuated. Explaining the exhausted portion on the rear side of the flange 55, an exhausted portion 50 is formed between the housing 22 and the revolution driving cylinder 26, and the exhausted portion 50 and the revolution driving cylinder 26 are formed. There is an exhausted portion 52 that is communicated through the communication hole 26a and is formed inside the revolution driving cylinder 26.

Further, the evacuated part 58 in the protective cover is connected to the evacuated part 50 inside the housing 22 through the joint area of the flange 55.
Is in communication with Further, the exhausted portion 58 existing inside the protective cover communicates with the exhausted portion in the vapor deposition processing chamber 14a through the joint of the protective covers 40, 42, and 44.

As described above, the various exhausted parts 50 to 58 formed near the rotating mechanism are in a complicated maze shape, and when these exhausted parts are evacuated only by the main vacuum port 18, the chamber 14 is opened. The rise time of the roughing from the atmospheric pressure state after the pressure is reduced to about 1 × 10 ⁻³ Torr after the chamber 14 is closed is extremely increased.

Therefore, in the apparatus of the present embodiment, the preliminary vacuum port 24 is connected to the exhaust hole 22a formed on the peripheral surface of the housing 22, so that evacuation can be performed in the vicinity of the maze-shaped exhausted portion. In addition, the communication hole 26a is formed on the peripheral surface of the revolution driving cylinder 26 to shorten the exhaust path distance to the preliminary vacuum port 24.

Next, the structure of the exhaust system via the main vacuum port 18 and the two auxiliary vacuum ports 24 (corresponding to the two flanges 55) will be described with reference to FIG.

The main vacuum port 18 has a main exhaust pipe 6 having an inner diameter of 500 mm.
0 is concatenated. A first valve V1, a diffusion pump DP as a main pump, and a second valve V2 are respectively connected in the middle of the main exhaust pipe 60, and a rotary pump RP is connected to a terminal side thereof. Further, the rough exhaust pipe 62 is connected so as to bypass and connect the upstream side of the first valve V1 and the downstream side of the second valve V2 of the main exhaust pipe 60.
Is arranged. The roughing exhaust pipe 62 has, for example, an inner diameter of 15 mm.
A third valve V3 and a mechanical booster pump MBP are connected in the middle of the piping. Further, a bypass pipe 64 as a bypass path of the mechanical booster pump MBP is connected, and a fourth valve V4 is connected in the middle of the bypass pipe 64.

The roughing for making the inside of the vapor deposition processing chamber 14a inside the chamber 14 a vacuum degree of about 10 Torr from the atmospheric pressure state is performed by opening only the third and fourth valves V3 and V4,
A vacuum is drawn along the evacuation path R3 shown in the figure. The reason for this is that if the mechanical booster pump MBP is used in a pressure state of about 10 Torr or more, it is highly likely that this will be broken. Vacuum processing chamber 14 from about 10 Torr to 1 × 10
When roughing down to about ^-3 Torr, only the third valve V3 is opened, and vacuuming is performed along the exhaust path R2 using the mechanical booster pump MBP. And
In order to set the vacuum chamber 14a to a high degree of vacuum of 1 × 10 ⁻³ Torr or less, only the first and second valves V1 and V2 are opened, and evacuation is performed along the exhaust path R1 shown in FIG. I do.

On the other hand, before the vapor deposition processing in the vapor deposition processing chamber 14a is completed and the chamber 14 is opened, the pressure inside the chamber 14 needs to be set to the atmospheric pressure. Therefore, the main exhaust pipe 60
A leak pipe 66 is connected on the way, and a filter 7 is provided at an open end of the leak pipe 667 arranged inside the clean area 70.
2 is arranged, and a fifth valve V5 is connected in the middle of the leak pipe 66. Then, the air inside the clean area 70 can be supplied to the inside of the chamber 14 along the leak path R4.

In the present embodiment, since two auxiliary vacuum ports 24 are provided, one end of the auxiliary port exhaust pipe 68 is connected to each of the auxiliary vacuum ports 24, and the other end side is the main exhaust pipe 60.
It is connected to the. A sixth valve V6 is connected in the middle of the spare port exhaust pipe 68. This sixth valve
V6 is opened when the inside of the chamber 14 is roughly evacuated and evacuated to a high vacuum, and closed when the inside of the chamber 14 is brought to the atmospheric pressure state. Note that, when the vapor deposition process is started inside the chamber 14, the valve V6 may be closed to reduce the amount of the vapor deposited around the rotation mechanism.

 Next, the operation will be described.

 This batch processing is executed according to the following procedure.

Closure of chamber 14 → rough evacuation of chamber 14 → high vacuum evacuation of chamber 14 → heating of evaporation source → evaporation process → cooling → leak into chamber 14 → chamber
Opening of 14 → Replacement of deposition target As described above, in this deposition processing apparatus, the deposition target is replaced by opening the chamber 14 for each batch process, and thereafter, after closing the chamber 14, the atmospheric pressure is reduced to a predetermined vacuum degree. Must be roughed up to reach. Conventionally, the vacuum pull-up time until the inside of the chamber 14 reaches a predetermined degree of vacuum is long, and the throughput of batch processing has been greatly reduced. The reason for this is that the portion to be evacuated around the rotation mechanism on the back side of the flange 55 must also be evacuated only by the main vacuum port 18.

In the apparatus of the present embodiment, the evacuation around the rotation mechanism having the complicated maze-shaped exhausted portion is mainly performed by the preliminary vacuum port.
Have gone through 24. In particular, the exhausted portion 50 between the housing 22 and the revolution driving cylinder 26, and the inside of the revolution driving cylinder 26 communicated with the exhausted portion 50 through the communication hole 26a of the revolution driving cylinder 26. Since the exhausted portion 52 can be efficiently evacuated by the preliminary vacuum port 24, the evacuation of this region can be performed quickly. Further, since the exhausted portion 58 inside each of the pollution protection covers 40, 42, and 44 is communicated with the exhausted portion 50 via the inside of the flange 55, the vacuum of the exhausted portion 58 inside the pollution protection cover is reduced. Since the evacuation can be performed through the preliminary vacuum port 24 together with the main vacuum port 18, the rough evacuation time can be reduced.

If the whole of the maze-shaped exhausted parts 50 to 58 is implemented only through the main vacuum port 18, it must be evacuated through the joint of the pollution protection covers 40, 42, and 44. , The exhaust must be extremely inefficient. Especially,
In order to further reduce the wraparound of the deposit, it is necessary to reduce the clearance between the contamination protection covers 40, 42, and 44, resulting in less efficient exhaust.

Thus, by arranging the preliminary vacuum port 24 and evacuating, for example, the inside of the chamber 14 having a capacity of 10 m ³ and the evacuated portion 1 × 10 ⁻⁴ Torr near the rotating mechanism are evacuated. Can be reduced to about 5 minutes, and compared to what used to take several times longer than before,
It is understood that the start-up time for each batch process was significantly reduced.

In particular, as in the apparatus of this embodiment, two flanges 55
In the case of supporting as many as 20 deposition object support shafts 20 and rotating and revolving the same, the communication path of the exhausted portion is formed into a complicated maze by a complicated mechanism for rotating and revolving. I will. In the future, as the number of axes increases further in order to improve throughput, it is expected that the time required for evacuation of the evacuated portion near this type of rotating mechanism will increase.
Therefore, in addition to the main vacuum port 18 for evacuating the inside of the chamber 14 in particular, the effect of arranging the auxiliary vacuum port 24 for evacuating around the multi-axis rotating mechanism is further increased. It is expected to do.

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

In the above embodiment, the present invention is applied to a vapor deposition processing apparatus, but the present invention can be applied to various other vacuum processing apparatuses having a rotating mechanism inside a vacuum processing chamber. Examples of this type of apparatus include an ion plating apparatus having a mechanism for rotating an object to be processed in a vacuum processing chamber or a CVD apparatus.
An apparatus can be used.

Further, the rotation mechanism is not limited to the one that rotates the driven body to rotate and revolves, and may be one that performs one of the rotation drives. The driven body to be rotated is not limited to the object to be processed. , An electrode or the like disposed inside the vacuum processing chamber.

〔The invention's effect〕

According to the present invention, since the evacuated part near the rotating mechanism part having a complicated maze shape can be evacuated through the preliminary vacuum port, as a result, the inside of the chamber is set to a predetermined degree of vacuum. In this case, the time required for vacuum rise can be greatly reduced, and the throughput can be improved. It is also possible to prevent dust and the like near the rotation mechanism from flowing into the chamber.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic cross-sectional view for explaining a rotation mechanism unit and an exhaust system of a vapor deposition apparatus to which the present invention is applied, FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of a revolving drive unit and an automatic drive unit of an object to be processed, FIG. 3 is a schematic explanatory view for explaining an exhaust path of a main vacuum port and a preliminary vacuum port, and FIG. 4 is a schematic perspective view for explaining an external configuration of a vapor deposition apparatus. 14 …… Chamber, 14a …… Vacuum processing chamber (evaporation processing chamber), 18 …… Main vacuum port, 20 …… Equipment support shaft, 24 …… Preliminary vacuum port, 26a …… Communication hole, 27 …… Shaft, 34: Rotating shaft, 40, 42, 44: Contamination protection cover, 50-58: Exhausted part, 60: Main exhaust pipe, 68: Spare port exhaust pipe.

Claims (1)

(57) [Claims] 1. A vacuum processing apparatus having a support member for supporting an object to be processed in a chamber capable of being evacuated through a vacuum port communicating with a vacuum evacuation means, wherein the chamber communicates with the chamber on the bottom side of the chamber. A housing is provided, and a rotation mechanism for driving the support member is disposed in the housing. Further, the housing is provided with an exhaust hole communicating with an atmosphere in the housing, and the exhaust hole has a vicinity of the rotation mechanism. A vacuum processing apparatus, wherein a preliminary vacuum port for evacuating the atmosphere is connected.