JPH07288225A - Method for checking film thickness of in-line coater and wafer boat - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To perform film-thickness check of an in-line coater without uselessly decreasing the availability of the in-line coater. CONSTITUTION:The coating at a coating part 1 and the processing other than the coating performed at a processing part 2, which is continued to the coating part 1, are continuously performed in an in-line flow. Only the coating is performed at the coating part 1 in an off-line flow. The in-line flow and the off-line flow can be performed in parallel. When the film thickness is checked, the in-line flow and the off-line flow are performed in parallel. A semiconductor wafer for monitoring the off-line flow is taken out of the in-line coater, and the thickness of the coating film is measured.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a method for checking the film thickness of an in-line type coater, and particularly to a resist or SO.
A film thickness check method for checking the film thickness of a coating film for an in-line coater in which G or the like is coated on the coating part and the processes other than the coating are continuously performed in a processing part connected to this coating part Related to wafer boats.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art As a coater for coating a resist or SOG (silicon on glass), an off-line type coater for performing only coating, and a treatment for performing a treatment other than coating on a coating portion (for example, heat treatment such as exposure or baking) There is an in-line coater in which the coating and the other treatments are continuously performed. Since the in-line type coater can continuously perform the resist film or SOG coating and the exposure or baking without exposing the semiconductor wafer to the outside,
It has advantages such as good production efficiency and high quality stability.

3A and 3B are schematic views showing other examples of such an in-line type coater, and FIG. 3A shows a coating section 1 and a stepper section (exposure processing section) 2 integrated with each other. Shows an in-line coater for resist coating, (B) shows an in-line coater for SOG coating in which the coating section 1 and the baking section 3 are integrated, and 4 and 4 are portions for loading and unloading a semiconductor wafer,
5, 5 ... Are unit cassettes, and each in-line type coater is provided with, for example, 4 unit cassette parts. For example, each unit cassette part 5, 5 ,. The semiconductor wafer can be supplied to the coating unit 1 in a state where the semiconductor wafer is housed in a wafer carrier that can be used. Reference numeral 6 denotes an interface, which is capable of transferring semiconductor wafers between the wafer carrier and the wafer boat for heat treatment, and is generally essential in an in-line type coater for SOG coating as shown in FIG. 3 (B). However, in the in-line type coater for resist coating as shown in FIG. 3 (A), it may or may not exist.

By the way, in both the in-line type coater for resist coating as shown in FIG. 3A and the in-line type coater for ROG coating as shown in FIG. 3B, the semiconductor wafer is coated with a certain frequency. It is necessary to check the thickness of the film.
This is because it is necessary to adjust or repair the inline type coater when the film thickness of the coating film is not within the predetermined allowable range. And
While the film thickness check in the in-line coater for resist coating as shown in FIG. 3A needs to be performed by measuring the film thickness without performing the exposure process after the resist is coated on the semiconductor wafer. The film thickness check in the in-line type coater for ROG coating as shown in FIG. 3B needs to be performed by measuring the film thickness of the ROG film after further heat treatment after coating the semiconductor wafer with ROG. .

First, how the film thickness check is conventionally performed in an in-line type coater for resist coating as shown in FIG. 3A will be described. Conventional inline type coater is usually
That is, in the case of ordinary production, as shown by the solid arrow A in FIG. 3A, when the coating process is completed in the coating unit 1, the exposure process unit 2 exposes the semiconductor wafer after the exposure. When the wafer is taken out from the unit cassette 5 of the wafer loading / unloading unit 4 and the film thickness is checked, the semiconductor wafer which has been exposed when the coating process is finished in the coating unit 1 as shown by the arrow B of the broken line in FIG. Semiconductor wafer loading / unloading section 4
Of the semiconductor wafer, and the film thickness is checked on the semiconductor wafer.
Conventionally, the flow of the semiconductor wafer indicated by the arrow A for performing normal production and the flow of the semiconductor wafer indicated by the arrow B for checking the film thickness cannot be performed in parallel. It was necessary to stop normal production when checking the thickness. Such a film thickness check is necessary, for example, once or twice a week for one in-line coater. In the specification of the present application, a flow for continuously performing the coating processing in the coating portion as shown by the arrow A and the processing other than the coating performed in the processing portion connected to the coating portion is referred to as “in-line flow”, and arrow B A flow for performing only the coating process in the coating section as shown in (3) is called "offline flow".

Next, a conventional film thickness checking method in an in-line type coater for ROG coating as shown in FIG. 3B will be described with reference to FIG. Normally, as shown in FIG. 4A, for example, 25 semiconductor wafers are stored in the wafer carrier 7 to supply the semiconductor wafers from the unit cassette 5 to the inside of the wafer boat 1, and the coating is completed. Two wafer carriers 7, semiconductor wafers for 7 minutes, that is, 50 semiconductor wafers are transferred to the vertical boat 8 containing 50 wafers by the interface 6, and the 50 semiconductor wafers are put in the vertical boat 8. Heat treatment is performed in the heat treatment unit 3. 25 semiconductor wafers after heat treatment
To the semiconductor wafer loading / unloading section 4 through the coating section 1.

When measuring the film thickness, as shown in FIG. 4B, one wafer carrier 7 is used as the monitor wafer carrier 7m. For example, one wafer carrier 7m is used as the monitor wafer carrier 7m. The monitor semiconductor wafer is stored in the coating section 1 together with the normal wafer carrier 7 storing the normal semiconductor wafer, and the SOG is applied to the monitor semiconductor wafer in the same manner as the normal semiconductor wafer. Coating, and thereafter, one monitor semiconductor wafer of the monitor wafer carrier 7 m and 25 semiconductor wafers of the normal wafer carrier 7 are housed in a wafer boat 8 capable of storing 50 and heat treated. To do. Then, the 26 semiconductor wafers that have undergone the heat treatment are transferred to the wafer carriers 7 and 7m, taken out from the semiconductor wafer loading / unloading section 4 through the coating section 1, and the film thickness of the monitor semiconductor wafer is measured. The film thickness is checked by. The film thickness check of such an in-line coater for ROG in-line flow needs to be performed at least once a day, and it takes several hours (for example, 3 hours) to perform the film thickness check once.

[0008]

By the way, FIG. 3 (A)
In the film thickness check in the in-line type coater for resist coating as shown in (1), when coating the semiconductor wafer in the coating unit 1 for the film thickness check, the coating for ordinary production cannot be performed, There was a problem that production efficiency declined. Further, the film thickness check in the ROG coating in-line coater as shown in FIG. In this case, although the process for the monitor semiconductor wafer and the process for the normal semiconductor wafer can be performed in parallel, when heat-treating the monitor semiconductor wafer together with the normal semiconductor wafer, 24 boats each containing 50 wafers can accommodate 24 wafers. There is a space, and it is necessary to perform heat treatment for 3 hours or more in that state, and therefore the production efficiency is reduced.

The present invention has been made in order to solve such a problem, and makes it possible to check the film thickness of an in-line coater without unduly reducing the operating efficiency of the in-line coater. With the goal.

[0010]

According to the film thickness check method for an inline coater of claim 1, the inline coater is set so that the inline flow and the off-line flow can be performed in parallel, and the film thickness is checked. When doing inline flow and offline flow in parallel,
The semiconductor wafer for off-line flow monitoring is taken out of the in-line coater to measure the film thickness of the coating film.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for checking a film thickness of an in-line type coater, wherein a semiconductor wafer is placed in a wafer carrier accommodating a plurality of semiconductor wafers, the semiconductor wafer is supplied to a coating section to perform coating processing, and coating In the method for checking the film thickness of an in-line type coater, in which the processed semiconductor wafers are transferred to a wafer boat accommodating a plurality of semiconductor wafers and another process is performed in the processing unit connected to the coating unit, the wafer boat is usually used as the wafer boat. In addition to a plurality of wafer storage units for storing semiconductor wafers, a monitor wafer storage unit for storing monitor semiconductor wafers is used. Supplied to the coating section for normal semiconductor wafers and monitors Performing the coating on the semiconductor wafer and the other processing in the processing section after transferring to the another wafer storage tool, and then taking out each of the semiconductor wafers from the inline-type coater and monitoring semiconductor wafers. The feature is that film thickness is measured.

A wafer boat according to a third aspect of the present invention is characterized by having a storage capacity for storing a plurality of normal semiconductor wafers and one to a plurality of monitor semiconductor wafers.

[0013]

According to the method for checking the film thickness of the in-line coater of claim 1, the off-line flow for checking the film thickness can be performed in parallel with the in-line flow for ordinary production. It is possible to perform the film thickness check without unduly reducing the operating efficiency of the in-line coater.

According to the method for checking the film thickness of the in-line type coater of claim 2, since the wafer boat having the storage portion for the semiconductor wafer for monitoring in addition to the storage portion for the ordinary semiconductor wafer is used as the wafer boat, the film thickness check is performed. Even when performing the above, the normal semiconductor wafer is stored in the normal semiconductor wafer storage unit, and the processing other than coating is performed while the monitor semiconductor wafer is stored in the monitor semiconductor wafer storage unit. It is possible to perform processing in a state where a large amount of empty space is not generated. Therefore, it is possible to check the film thickness of the in-line coater without unduly reducing the operating efficiency of the in-line coater.

According to the wafer boat of the third aspect, the wafer boat has a storage capacity for storing a plurality of normal semiconductor wafers and one to a plurality of monitor semiconductor wafers. Therefore, the method for checking the film thickness of the inline-type coater in item 2 can be implemented.

[0016]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The method for checking the film thickness of an in-line coater and the wafer boat according to the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the illustrated embodiments. FIG. 1 is an explanatory view of one embodiment of the method for checking the film thickness of the in-line coater of the present invention. The film thickness check method of this in-line coater is a film thickness check method of an in-line coater using an in-line coater for resist coating as shown in FIG. 3 (A). The difference from the conventional method of checking the film thickness of the in-line coater is that the in-line flow and the off-line flow are performed in parallel.

This is to change a part of the program for controlling the inline type coater so that the inline flow can be performed in parallel with the offline flow, and in the normal time, the inline flow (see FIG.
When the film thickness is checked once or twice a week by performing the production according to A), an in-line flow for normal production and an off-line flow of the semiconductor wafer for monitoring, which is performed only for the film thickness check (B in FIG. 1) is performed in parallel. As described above, according to the film thickness check method of the in-line coater, the offline flow for the film thickness check can be performed in parallel with the in-line flow for the normal production. Since it can be performed without stopping completely, it can be performed without unduly reducing the operating efficiency of the inline coater.

2 (A) and 2 (B) show another embodiment of the method for checking the film thickness of the in-line type coater of the present invention. (A) is the in-line type coater, and (B) is the wafer carrier 7 to be used. , 7 and 7 m and the wafer boat 8 are shown.
The in-line type coater is the same as the in-line type coater shown in FIG. 3B, and the wafer boat 8 used in the exposure processing unit 3 is only different from the conventional one. Therefore, the in-line type coater will be described. Is omitted. The wafer boat 8 of this in-line type coater has a semiconductor wafer storage space for 50 semiconductor wafers as well as a semiconductor wafer storage space for a plurality of monitor semiconductor wafers (for example, 3 wafers), that is, for example, has a storage capacity for 53 wafers. There is.

In the film thickness checking method of the present in-line type coater, when the film thickness is checked, in addition to the wafer carriers 7, 7 each containing 25 ordinary semiconductor wafers, one to a plurality of wafers, for example, three wafers are used. The wafer carrier 7m containing the semiconductor wafers for monitoring is also supplied to the in-line coater, and after the ROG coating of these semiconductor wafers is completed, the interface 6 transfers the wafer carriers 7, 7 and 7m to, for example, a wafer boat 8 containing 53 wafers. The semiconductor wafer is transferred, and heat treatment is performed in the heat treatment section 3. After that, the 53 semiconductor wafers that have undergone the heat treatment are transferred to the wafer carriers 7, 7 and 7 m,
The film thickness is checked by taking it out of the semiconductor wafer loading / unloading part 4 through the coating part 1 and measuring the film thickness of the monitor semiconductor wafer.

According to such a method for checking the film thickness of the in-line type coater, since the wafer boat 8 having the storage portion for the semiconductor wafer for monitoring in addition to the storage portion for the ordinary semiconductor wafer is used as the wafer boat, the film thickness check is performed. Even when performing, by storing the ordinary semiconductor wafer completely in the ordinary semiconductor wafer storage unit and performing the processing other than coating with the monitor semiconductor wafer stored in the monitor semiconductor wafer storage unit It is possible to perform processing in a state where many empty spaces are not generated in the wafer boat. Therefore, the film thickness of the inline coater can be checked without unduly reducing the operating efficiency of the inline coater.

[0021]

According to the method for checking the film thickness of the in-line type coater of claim 1, the in-line type coater is set so that the in-line flow and the off-line flow can be performed in parallel, and when the film thickness is checked, the in-line coater is in-line. It is characterized in that the flow and the off-line flow are performed in parallel, and the semiconductor wafer for monitoring, which has completed the off-line flow, is taken out from the in-line type coater and the film thickness of the coating film is measured. Therefore, according to the method for checking the film thickness of the in-line coater of claim 1, the offline flow for checking the film thickness is performed in parallel with the in-line flow for ordinary production. It can be performed without unnecessarily reducing the operation efficiency of the inline type coater.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for checking a film thickness of an in-line type coater, in which a semiconductor wafer is placed in a wafer carrier for accommodating a plurality of semiconductor wafers, the semiconductor wafer is supplied to a coating section to perform a coating process, and coating In the method for checking the film thickness of an in-line type coater, in which the processed semiconductor wafers are transferred to a wafer boat accommodating a plurality of semiconductor wafers and another process is performed in the processing unit connected to the coating unit, the wafer boat is usually used as the wafer boat. In addition to a plurality of wafer storage units for storing semiconductor wafers, a monitor wafer storage unit for storing monitor semiconductor wafers is used. Supplied to the coating section for normal semiconductor wafers and monitors Performing the coating on the semiconductor wafer and the other processing in the processing section after transferring to the another wafer storage tool, and then taking out each of the semiconductor wafers from the inline-type coater and monitoring semiconductor wafers. The feature is that the film thickness is measured. Therefore, according to the method for checking the film thickness of the in-line type coater of claim 2, since the wafer boat that has the storage portion for the monitor semiconductor wafer in addition to the storage portion for the ordinary semiconductor wafer is used, the film thickness check is performed. Even if it is done, the normal semiconductor wafer is completely stored in the normal semiconductor wafer storage unit, and the processing other than coating is performed while the monitor semiconductor wafer is stored in the monitor semiconductor wafer storage unit. It is possible to perform processing in a state where the boat does not generate much empty space. Therefore, the film thickness can be checked without unnecessarily reducing the operating efficiency of the in-line coater.

A wafer boat according to a third aspect of the invention has a storage capacity for storing a plurality of normal semiconductor wafers and one to a plurality of monitor semiconductor wafers. Therefore, according to the wafer boat of claim 3, since the wafer boat has a storage capacity for storing a plurality of normal semiconductor wafers and one to a plurality of monitor semiconductor wafers,
By using this, it becomes possible to carry out the method for checking the film thickness of the inline type coater of claim 2.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram of one embodiment of a method for checking the film thickness of an in-line type coater of the present invention.

2 (A) and 2 (B) show another embodiment of the method for checking the film thickness of the in-line type coater of the present invention.
Shows an in-line type coater, and (B) shows a wafer carrier and a wafer boat to be used.

3A and 3B are schematic views showing different examples of an in-line type coater, and FIG. 3A is an in-line type for resist coating in which a coating section and a stepper section (exposure processing section) are integrated. A coater is shown, and (B) shows an in-line coater for SOG coating in which a coating portion and a baking portion are integrated.

4A and 4B are explanatory views of one conventional example of a film thickness checking method in the inline type coater shown in FIG. 3B, in which FIG. Indicates the case of film thickness check.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 coating section 2, 3 processing section for performing processing other than coating 7, 7 m wafer carrier 8 wafer boat

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification code Office reference number FI technical display location H01L 21/66 P 7630-4M

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An in-line flow for continuously performing a coating process on a semiconductor wafer in a coating unit and a process other than coating in a processing unit connected to the coating unit, and a coating process for a semiconductor wafer in a coating unit only. The in-line coater is set so that the off-line flow to be performed can be performed in parallel, and when the film thickness is checked, the in-line flow and the off-line flow of the monitor semiconductor wafer are performed in parallel.
A method for checking the film thickness of an in-line coater, wherein the monitor semiconductor wafer is taken out of the in-line coater and the film thickness of the coating film is measured. 2. A semiconductor carrier is placed in a wafer carrier for accommodating a plurality of semiconductor wafers, the semiconductor wafers are supplied to a coating section to perform a coating process, and the semiconductor wafers after the coating process are processed into a plurality of semiconductor wafers. In a method of checking the film thickness of an in-line type coater in which a wafer boat for storing wafers is transferred and another process is performed in a processing unit connected to the coating unit, a plurality of wafer storage units for storing normal semiconductor wafers as the wafer boat In addition to the above, a monitor wafer storage unit that stores the monitor semiconductor wafer is used.When checking the film thickness, supply the monitor semiconductor wafer together with the normal semiconductor wafer to the coating unit and Coating for semiconductor wafers for monitoring and (C) The above-mentioned different processing in the processing section after being transferred to the storage device is performed, and thereafter, each of the semiconductor wafers is taken out of the in-line type coater and the film thickness is measured on the semiconductor wafer for monitoring. To check film thickness of in-line coater 3. An in-line coater film thickness checking method according to claim 2, further comprising a storage capacity for storing a plurality of normal semiconductor wafers and one to a plurality of monitor semiconductor wafers. Wafer boat used for