JP3175231B2 - Mechanical interface device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a mechanical interface device used in a semiconductor manufacturing process.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, semiconductor processing has been carried out in a specially designed clean room in order to prevent particle contamination of the semiconductor. Since there is a limit in reducing the contamination level of particle contamination, for example,
A standardized mechanical interface device has been developed as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 0-143623.

[0003] This device, for example, as shown in FIG.
An apparatus case 1 containing a wafer processing apparatus (not shown) and filled with clean air, a portable type box (hereinafter, referred to as a pod POD) 10 and a transfer apparatus 30
Contains. Device on the top plate 2 of the case 1 is 4 (loading and unloading port for the wafer cassette 20) port by port plate 3 is formed, the pod PO with handle 10 A
D10 is mounted on the port plate 3.

The pod POD 10 has a shape having a flange 12 having an annular portion 12a around an opening 11 thereof. The transfer device 30 in this example is a lifting device, and the wafer cassette 20 is placed on a lifting table 31 supported by a lifting shaft 32 to move up and down. The lifting table 31 is a port door, The port 4 is abutted or fitted to the port plate 3 from below to seal the main body case 1 from the outside, and the base 21 of the wafer cassette 20 on the port door 31 is positioned around the opening 11 of the pod POD10. The opening 11 is sealed by contacting the opening 11. The table 21 is hereinafter referred to as a pod door. Reference numeral 13 denotes a sealing material that seals between the opening of the pod POD10 and the pod door 21, a sealing material 14 seals between the flange 12 of the pod POD10 and the port plate 3, and a sealing material 15 Seal between port door 31.
A lock mechanism 40 has a lock lever 41 driven by a geared motor (not shown), and a pod PO.
It serves to push down the flange 12 of D10 onto the port plate 3.

In this example, the pod POD 10 is placed on the port plate 3 after the wafer W before processing is transferred from another place (not shown) onto the port door 31.
It is fixed with the lock lever 41. After fixing with the lock lever 41, clean air is supplied into the pod POD10,
After the inside of the pod POD10 has the same clean atmosphere as the inside of the main body case 1, the port door 31 is lowered to the transfer position. When the port door 31 is lowered to the transfer position, the transfer device (not shown)
To a processing machine.

[0006]

Conventionally, particle contamination of the wafer W has been a problem. However, as the density of semiconductor integrated circuits has increased, the natural oxide film on the wafer surface has been reduced due to oxygen in the air. The influence begins to become a problem, and in order to prevent the growth of this natural oxide film, it is necessary to move and transport the wafer in an inert gas (N2 gas) atmosphere. At present, the O2 concentration is 10 ppm or less, O
Gas atmosphere having a concentration of 100 ppm or less is required.

When the above-described apparatus is used, the air in the main body case 1 is replaced with N 2 gas to form an N 2 gas atmosphere, and the pod POD 10 is set on the top plate 2 of the main body case 1. Each time, N inside
The atmosphere is replaced with 2 gases to form an N2 gas atmosphere.

In this case, between the pod POD10 and the port plate 3, between the pod POD10 and the pod door 21,
Sealing properties between the port door 31 and the port plate 3,
In particular, it is required to improve the sealing property between the pod POD 10 and the port plate 3. However, the sealing material (O-ring) has manufacturing variations, and when viewed macroscopically, it undulates on a clean flat surface. Since there is a sealing material (O), mechanical means such as using the lock lever 41 is used.
In this method, it is difficult to obtain a sufficient sealing performance. In order to improve the sealing performance by this mechanical means, it is necessary to arrange a large number of lock levers 41 in the circumferential direction of the port plate 3. In addition, if the pod POD10 becomes large, the required pressing force becomes large, so that each lock mechanism becomes large, the cost required for this becomes high, and the periphery of the port of the device case becomes complicated, and the lock mechanism becomes difficult. Therefore, there is a problem that a large space is required.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve this problem, and the seal between the pod and the apparatus main body is reliably improved by simple means without providing a lock mechanism or the like around the port of the apparatus case. and to provide a mechanical interface equipment capable.

[0010]

According to the present invention, in order to achieve the above object, according to the first aspect of the present invention, the apparatus is mounted on a port plate which is provided in an apparatus case and forms a port for carrying in / out of an object to be processed. A pod with an opening flange covering the port, a pod door capable of closing the opening of the pod, a port which is supported in the apparatus case so as to be able to move up and down and engages with the port plate at the time of the highest movement to close the port A mechanical interface device for transporting the pod door from within the pod to the body case and vice versa, comprising: a door; and means for biasing the pod toward the port plate. Means for lowering the upper surface of the pod, the pad being capable of pressing the pod, and a lifting drive mechanism for moving the pad up and down. It was.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, the lifting drive mechanism is provided with
Arm for fixedly supporting the arm, and the movable arm
A rotating screw shaft screwed through the shaft and rotating the rotating screw shaft
And a driving source unit for driving, pad, upper
Configuration fixedly supported by a plate-shaped pressing member and the lower end face in serial movable arm consists pad body covered with the first cushioning member, both being relatively tiltably connected one point interposed a ball joint And

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the driving source unit of the lifting drive mechanism , the pad exerts a downward pressing force on the pod.
When actuated to a predetermined value, the movable arm descends
It is configured to incorporate a torque limiter that stops .

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, the pad has a built-in pod holding mechanism in the pad main body, which can move forward and backward with respect to a handle provided on the pod.

[0014] According to claim 5, the pad in the pad body, a built-in distance sensor for measuring a distance to the pod, after contact the pad top surface, measured value tolerance range in the near-Turkey <br / >, A transition to a pod pressing operation is made on condition that the above is detected.

According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, the apparatus case has a shelf capable of temporarily storing an empty pod, and a pod transfer means between the shelf and the port plate. A part of this transfer means is constituted.

[0016]

According to the present invention, when the pod is placed on the port plate, the pad descends on the pod and presses the pod, so that the pad is sandwiched between the pod and the port plate 3 over the entire circumference of the sealing material. Pressure acts.

[0017]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

In FIGS. 1 and 2, 10A and 10B
Is a pod. The apparatus case 1 includes a case body 1A that houses a wafer processing apparatus (not shown), a wafer loading / unloading section 1B, and a stocker section 1C that are separated from the case body 1A by a partition wall 2A. D is a port of the wafer loading / unloading section 1B. Port plates 30A and 30B having ports 4A and 4B, respectively, are provided on a horizontal wall portion 2a of the partition wall 2A that separates the case main body portion 1A and the space portion E that houses the pod loading mechanism (the elevating device). Is provided. The wafer loading / unloading unit 1B includes two transfer devices 50A and 50B.
It has housed a stocker 1 C is empty pod POD1
It has a plurality of shelves 70 for storing zeros. Although the transfer devices 50A and 50B have a horizontal drive mechanism and a vertical drive mechanism, in this embodiment, only a vertical drive mechanism (elevation device) is shown. This elevating device is, for example, a screw type elevating device, and has a movable arm 52 screwed to a rotating screw shaft (not shown) in a guide cylinder 51 via an engaging element (not shown). The pad 54 is fixed to the portion. Numeral 53 denotes a drive source unit for driving the rotary screw shaft to rotate, and includes a torque limiter (not shown). In this embodiment,
Lifting devices 50A and 50B are pods POD10A, 10B
Are moved up and down toward the ports 4A and 4B, respectively.

As shown in FIG. 3, the pad 54 has a cap shape comprising a plate-like pressing member 55 fixed to the movable arm 52 and a cylindrical pad body 56 having an upper bottom. Ball joint 57 provided at the center
And is connected to a single point so as to be relatively tiltable by a small angle, and is attached to the holding member 55 or the pad body 56 between the periphery of the lower surface of the holding member 55 and the periphery of the pad body 56. A cushioning material 58A such as rubber is interposed. The pad body 56 of the pad 54 is, as shown in FIG.
The OD 10 has an inward opening peripheral portion (flange portion) 56A that can be brought into contact with the peripheral portion of the upper surface of the OD 10, and the lower surface of the opening peripheral portion 56A is covered with a cushioning material 58B such as rubber. The pad 54 contains a pod holding mechanism 59 and four non-contact distance sensors 60 therein. The pod holding mechanism 59 is a driving unit 59B for forward and backward driving the horizontal rod 59A and a horizontal rod 59A which moves forward and backward relative to the handle 10 a pod POD10. The four distance sensors 60 are disposed on the upper surfaces of the four corners of the opening peripheral portion 56A of the pad body 56B with the sensor centers facing the through holes 56a.

Pod POD10A and port plate 3A
Has, for example, a structure as shown in FIG. 13
Is a sealing material (O-ring) for sealing between the opening of the pod POD 10A and the pod door 21A, and 14 is a pod P
A seal material (O-ring) 15 attached to the lower surface of the flange 12 of the OD 10 and a seal material (O-ring) 15 for sealing between the lower surface of the port plate 3A and the flange 31a of the port door 31A. 3 1 and 3O has a gas supply hole and the gas exhaust holes formed in the port plate 3,
One end is open to the inner peripheral surface of the port 4A and 4B, the gas supply hole 3 1 of the other end is connected to the N2 gas cylinder (not shown) through a pipe, the other end of the gas exhaust hole 3O is contacted to the outside of the apparatus through the pipe . The same applies to the pod POD10B and the port plate 3B. In addition, 31A of FIG.
Is the port door for port 4A, 31B is port 4B
The port doors 30A and 30B are lifting devices.

The interior of the case body 1A is in an N2 gas atmosphere, and is always pressurized by injecting 20 L / min of N2 gas.

In this embodiment, four wafer cassettes (shown in FIG. 5) 20 are sequentially fed into the case main body 1A and are collectively processed in a film-forming reaction furnace (not shown). Sequentially from the case body 1A to the port 4A,
4B, the wafer is taken out to the wafer carry-in / carry-out section 1B.

Now, it is assumed that the first pod POD 10A is placed on the port plate 3A by a transfer robot (not shown) from outside the apparatus.

(A) When the first pod POD 10A is placed on the port plate 3A, the movable arm 52 of the lifting / lowering device 30A moves downward, and the pad 54 is moved from above to the first pod POD 10A. , The cushioning material 58B descends to a position where it comes into light contact with the upper surface of the pod POD10A.

(B) Each distance sensor 60 operates to measure the distance to the upper surface of the pod POD10A. If the measured value of each distance sensor 60 is within a preset allowable range, the pod holding mechanism 59 is driven and the horizontal rod 59A extends into the handle 10a.

(C) When the horizontal rod 59A is extended into the handle 10a and the pod can be held, the movable arm 52 is further lowered by a predetermined distance, and the pad 54 is moved to the cushioning material 58.
A downward pressing force acts on the pod POD10A via B.

When the pressing force increases to a predetermined value, the above-described torque limiter operates to move the drive source unit 53.
The lowering of the arm 52 is stopped.

Therefore, the sealing material (O-ring) 14 is sandwiched between the pod POD 10A and the port plate 3A. At this time, the pad body 56 and the pressing member 55 are connected by a ball joint 57 at a single point so as to be relatively tiltable by a small angle, and there is a cushioning material 58A between the two. Even if the upper surface of the main body 56 and the lower surface of the pressing member 55 are not parallel to each other, the pad main body 56 is deformed so as to receive a uniform pressing force over the entire periphery thereof, and the cushioning material 58B on the lower surface of the pad main body 56 is also provided.
Is deformed so as to prevent the pressing force acting on the upper part of the pod POD10A from becoming locally strong.

Therefore, as described above, the sealing material (O
The sealing material 14 is pressed against the port plate 3A over its entire circumference, even if the sealing material 14 has a variation in manufacturing and, when viewed macroscopically, has a wavy shape on a clean flat surface, and the port plate 3A is pressed. 3A and the flange 12 of the pod POD10A are sufficiently airtightly sealed to form a pod POD1.
To shut off by relative reliably outside air in 0A.

(D) Next, the inside of the pod POD 10A is replaced with N 2 gas using the gas supply port 3a and the gas exhaust port 3b. When the N 2 gas replacement is completed, (E) the pod holding mechanism 59 59A is retracted to the outside of the handle 10a.

(F) When the horizontal rod 59A is retracted out of the handle 10a, the port door 31A is lowered, and the wafer cassette 20 is taken into the case body 1A. Wafer cassette 2 taken into case body 1A
Numeral 0 is conveyed from above the port door 31A to the above-described reactor side (not shown), and the port door 31A rises to close the port 4A.

(G) During this time, the pod POD emptied
10A is lifted by a movable arm 52 from the port plate 3A to a predetermined height above (a position shown by a dotted line in FIG. 1), and then conveyed to the right in the horizontal direction shown by a solid line in FIG. It is conveyed and placed on the shelf 70.

(H) Similarly, the second pod POD 10B is fixed by receiving a pressing force from the pad 54 on the port plate 3B, and the sealing material (O-ring) 14 is sandwiched between the second pod POD 10B and the port plate 3B. Press. Subsequently, the steps (D) to (G) are sequentially executed. The same applies to the third and fourth pods POD (not shown).

The SMIF apparatus of this embodiment uses the gas supply port 3I and the gas exhaust port 3O in a state where the inside of the pod POD is securely shut off from outside air.
The inside of the pod POD is replaced with N2 gas. For the replacement with the N2 gas, for example, below the port plates 3A and 3B, the lower surfaces of the respective port plates are airtightly engaged to define an internal space in which the port doors 31A and 31B can move up and down by a predetermined distance. The skirt is provided separately from each of the port plates 3A and 3B, and the port door 3 is lowered by a predetermined distance.
1, 31B hermetically closes the lower end of the inner space of the skirt and sends N2 gas into the opened pod POD from the gas supply port 3a.

[0035]

As described above, according to the present invention, as means for urging the pod toward the port plate, a pad which is driven down to the peripheral portion of the upper surface of the pod and exerts a pressing force on the entire peripheral portion is used. With this configuration, the sealing member can be reliably pressed against the entire circumference with a desired pressing force, so that the sealing performance against gas can be improved and the reliability can be improved.

Further, since there is no need to dispose members around the ports of the device case, there is an advantage that the periphery of the ports can be simplified as compared with the case where the lock mechanism or the like is provided. If there is a mechanism to temporarily store the pod in the equipment case, the pad can be attached to the transfer mechanism for transferring the pod to the storage location. , And a desired sealing effect can be obtained extremely easily.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a partially broken side view showing an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a front view of the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is an enlarged view of a main part of the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a partially cutaway side view of a pad body of the pad in the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a diagram schematically showing a conventional SMIF device.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 This apparatus 3A, 3B Port plate 3 1 Gas supply port 3O Gas exhaust port 4A, 4B port 10A, 10B Pod POD 11 Pod POD opening 12 Pod POD flange 13, 14 Sealing material 20 Wafer cassette 21 Pod door 30A , 30B Lifting device 31A, 31B Port door 32 Lifting shaft 50A, 50B Transfer device (lifting device) 52 Movable arm 53 Drive source unit 54 Pad 55 Holding plate portion 56 Pad body 57 Ball joint 58A, 58B Buffer material 59 Pod holding mechanism 59A horizontal rod 59B driving device 60 distance sensor 70 shelf

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on the front page (72) Inventor Mitsuhiro Hayashi 100 Takegahana-cho, Ise-city, Mie Prefecture Inside Shinsei Electric Machinery Co., Ltd. Inside Ise Seisakusho (72) Inventor Masanao Murata 100 Takegahana-cho, Ise-shi, Mie Prefecture Shinko Electric Machinery Co., Ltd. 72) Inventor Moriya Hiya 100 Takegahana-cho, Ise City, Mie Prefecture, Shinko Electric Machinery Co., Ltd.Ise Works (58) Field surveyed (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) H01L 21/68

Claims (6)

(57) [Claims] An object case is provided in an apparatus case.
A pod with an opening flange that is placed on a port plate that forms a carry-out port and covers the port, a pod door that can close the opening of the pod, and that is supported in the apparatus case so as to be able to move up and down and is connected to the port plate at the time of the highest movement. A port door engaging to close the port, and means for biasing the pod toward the port plate;
In a mechanical interface device in which the port door conveys the pod door from the inside of the pod to the main body case and vice versa, the urging means includes a pad which is driven downward on the upper surface of the pod to press the pod. A mechanical interface device comprising a lifting drive mechanism for moving the pad up and down. 2. The lifting drive mechanism fixedly supports the pad.
Movable arm, and the movable arm is screwed through an engaging element.
Rotating screw shaft and a drive for rotating the rotating screw shaft
Has a source unit, the pad consists of a pad body plate-shaped pressing member and the lower end surface which is fixedly supported on the movable arm is covered with the first cushioning member, both interposed ball joint The mechanical interface device according to claim 1, wherein the mechanical interface device is connected at one point so as to be relatively tiltable. 3. A drive source unit of the lifting drive mechanism , wherein:
The pad applies a downward pressing force to the pod to the specified value.
The mechanical interface device according to claim 2, further comprising a torque limiter for stopping the lowering of the movable arm when used. 4. The mechanical interface device according to claim 3 , wherein the pad has a built-in pod holding mechanism capable of moving forward and backward with respect to a handle provided on the pod, in the pad body. 5. A pad is in its pad body, a built-in distance sensor for measuring a distance to the pod, after contact the pad top surface, that the measurement value is detected and near the allowable range Turkey 3. The mechanical interface device according to claim 2 , wherein the condition shifts to a pod pressing operation. 6. The apparatus case has a shelf capable of temporarily storing empty pods, and a pod transfer means between the shelf and the port plate, and the biasing means constitutes a part of the transfer means. The mechanical interface device according to claim 1, wherein: