JPH08117583A - Vacuum treatment apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To provide a vacuum treatment apparatus which takes out a material to be treated from a cassette case for treatment, can place automatically the treated material from a vacuum treatment chamber in the cassette case, has good thermal conductivity, is suitable for mass production, has good durability, and in which electric loss is reduced and the vacuum treatment chamber can be made compact. CONSTITUTION: In a vacuum treatment apparatus in which a vacuum treatment chamber 2 for conducting vacuum treatment such as etching of a material 16 to be treated is installed adjacent to a vacuum chamber equipped with a cassette case 7a containing the material 16 and a material transportation means, more than one hoist 14 which is loaded with the material and moves vertically between the position and a position for installing the material which is located downward is installed in the vacuum treatment chamber, and a transportation robot 9 which stretches and contracts a transportation means freely stretchably/ contractably/rotatably in more than one direction is installed to constitute the apparatus. After the material being taken out from a cassette case 77 for treatment, the material can be placed automatically in the cassette case 77 so that numbers of the materials can be treated at low temperature.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a vacuum processing apparatus for subjecting an object to be processed such as a silicon wafer or a glass substrate to vacuum processing such as etching, sputtering and ashing.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, in this type of vacuum processing apparatus,
When performing sputtering film formation on a plurality of objects to be processed, for example, a plurality of wafers, it is possible to attach a plurality of wafers to a tray in advance, carry them into a vacuum processing chamber, and perform sputtering film formation on each wafer at the same time. Has been done.

Further, without using a tray, the wafers are taken out one by one from a cassette case in which the wafers are stored by a transfer device, and the taken-out wafers are received by a wafer transfer device provided in a vacuum processing chamber and placed on an electrode inside the chamber. It has also been installed in. The electrode in this case has a structure called an external type, which is generally fixed to the lower part of the vacuum processing chamber and has no dead space below the electrode, and high-quality plasma processing is possible. Further, in this case, since the productivity becomes low when the wafers are processed one by one, it is possible to provide a plurality of vacuum processing chambers and sequentially feed the wafers to the respective chambers so as to form a multi-chamber apparatus to improve the productivity. It is being appreciated.

Further, when the electrode in the vacuum processing chamber is made rotatable, the wafer taken out from the cassette case by the transfer device is received by the wafer transfer device provided in the vacuum processing chamber, and the wafer is placed on the electrode by the transfer device. The electrode is rotated by a certain angle, and the next wafer is taken out from the cassette case and placed next to the electrode previously placed by the transfer device, and a plurality of wafers are processed on the electrode. ing.

[0005]

The tray type vacuum processing apparatus described above has an advantage of being able to process a plurality of wafers at the same time and shortening the processing time. However, the transfer of the wafers from the cassette case to the tray is manually performed. I had to rely on one or more robots. When a transfer robot is used for labor saving, the surface of the tray is made into a special shape by grooving or the like in order to enable the transfer of the wafer by the robot, or the wafer is lifted after making holes in the tray. It is necessary to provide a mechanism, and there is an inconvenience that the quality of the film and the uniformity of the film thickness distribution are deteriorated due to the processing of the tray in this way. Further, since the tray is used, an electrostatic chuck or the like cannot be used, it is difficult to dissipate the heat of the wafer, the temperature of the wafer tends to rise, and it is difficult to process the wafer at a low temperature.

Further, in the case of the type in which the wafers taken out from the cassette case by the transfer device are received one by one by the wafer transfer device in the vacuum processing chamber and placed on the electrodes in the chamber, the vacuum processing is performed to improve the productivity. The number of chambers must be increased, resulting in the disadvantage that the apparatus space is increased, and the number of vacuum processing chambers that can be installed is not large, so productivity is not improved so much.

Further, the above-mentioned rotary electrode structure is also called an internal cathode system. In this type, since a rotating mechanism for rotating the electrode is provided in the vacuum processing chamber, it becomes expensive and expensive. Dust, such as reaction products generated in the vacuum processing chamber, tends to adhere to the rotating mechanism and cause rotation failure, and during plasma processing, RF power and heating power are lost from the shaft of the rotating mechanism through the insulator, resulting in effective power. Is reduced, and there is a loss of power and power loss due to the rotation power supply means such as a rotating brush that supplies power to the electrode.There is a dead space inside and outside the vacuum processing chamber to enable rotation of the electrode by providing a rotating mechanism. Occurs, and the size of the vacuum processing chamber is increased, and there is a drawback that plasma flows into the dead space.

According to the present invention, an object to be processed such as a wafer can be automatically taken out from the cassette case and carried into the vacuum processing chamber, and the processed object can be accommodated in the cassette case from the vacuum processing chamber. It is an object of the present invention to provide a vacuum processing apparatus that has good heat conduction and is suitable for mass production, and also to provide a vacuum processing apparatus that has good durability and a small electric loss, and that can configure a vacuum processing chamber in a compact size. .

[0009]

According to the present invention, a vacuum chamber provided with a cassette case accommodating an object to be processed such as a wafer and a means for transferring the object to be processed is subjected to etching or other vacuum processing. In a vacuum processing apparatus having a series of processing chambers, a plurality of hoists are provided for placing an object to be processed in the vacuum processing chamber and moving up and down between the objects to be installed.
The above-mentioned object is achieved by constructing the transfer means by a transfer robot that is expandable and contractible, and expandable and contractible in a plurality of directions. It is preferable that the hoist extends to the outside of the vacuum processing chamber through an electrode provided in the lower portion of the vacuum processing chamber and is moved up and down by an elevating device outside the vacuum processing chamber, and the cassette case is outside the vacuum chamber via the vacuum chamber. It is preferable to mount it on an elevating table extending to.

[0010]

A cassette case accommodating an object to be processed, such as a wafer, is prepared in the vacuum chamber, the vacuum chamber is evacuated, and then the transfer robot is rotated and expanded / contracted to take out the object from the cassette case. It is loaded into the processing chamber in a predetermined direction. Inside the vacuum processing chamber, the hoist moves up to receive the object to be processed from the transfer robot, and after the transfer robot retreats, it moves down to set the object to be processed at a predetermined position. This is repeated according to the number of hoists to position a plurality of objects to be processed in the vacuum processing chamber. When the vacuum processing chamber is hermetically closed and the necessary processing for the object to be processed is completed, the chamber is opened, the transfer robot advances when one hoist rises, and the robot moves when the hoist descends. Receive the object to be processed. The robot repeats the operation of retracting and rotating to store the object to be processed in the empty shelf of the cassette case, and then repeating the above-mentioned operation of sequentially transferring the unprocessed object from the cassette case to each hoist. When the processing of the processed object prepared in the cassette case is completed, the vacuum chamber is opened and the cassette case containing the processed object is taken out to prepare the cassette case containing the unprocessed object.

[0011]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A case where an embodiment of the present invention is applied to an etching apparatus will be described with reference to the attached drawings. In FIGS. 1 and 2, reference numeral 1 is a vacuum chamber whose inside can be evacuated by a vacuum pump 17, reference numeral 2 Indicates a vacuum processing chamber connected to the vacuum chamber 1, and the vacuum chamber 1 and the vacuum processing chamber 2 are provided so as to communicate with each other through an opening 4 provided with a gate valve 3. The vacuum chamber 1 includes two lifting devices 5 and 1 for lifting the cassette case.
Transfer Robot Actuating Device 6 as Basic Object Transferring Means
And a cassette case 7a on each elevating shaft extending in vacuum from each elevating device 5 into the vacuum chamber 1 respectively.
7b is placed so as to be able to move up and down, and a retractable arm 8 is provided on a rotatable operation control shaft of the transport robot operating device 6 to configure a transport robot 9 that is extendable and retractable. The cassette cases 7a and 7b have shelves for accommodating the objects 16 to be processed such as silicon wafers and glass substrates in multiple stages, and are exposed to the outside through a door (not shown) provided at an appropriate position in the vacuum chamber 1. Taken out. The arm 8 having a fork-shaped tip of the transfer robot 9 can be moved in and out of the case 9a in a magnetic levitation state by a magnetic levitation device provided in a holding case 9a that rotates together with an operation control shaft of the operating device 6, for example. The direction of the holding case 9a, that is, the extension / contraction direction of the arm 8 was controlled by the multipoint position storage function of the actuating device 6 so that the actuation control shaft could be oriented in a predetermined direction at a suitable time.

The vacuum processing chamber 2 is provided with an exhaust port 10 connected to a vacuum pump 18, an inlet pipe 11 for introducing a gas such as an etching gas is provided above the chamber, and a circular cathode electrode 12 is externally provided at the bottom. I set it in the format. The cathode electrode 12 is composed of, for example, a water-cooled electrode connected to an RF power source 15, and three hoists 14 which are inserted through the electrode 12 and moved up and down by an external elevating device 13 are provided. A vacuum seal is provided around the hoist 14. Reference numeral 19 denotes an opening / closing drive device that opens / closes the gate valve 3.

When the object 16 to be processed is subjected to etching treatment in the illustrated embodiment, two cassette cases 7a and 7b containing the object 16 to be processed are installed on the elevating device 5, for example, both cassette cases 7a, Keep 7b in the most raised position. The inside of the vacuum chamber 1 is evacuated to a vacuum, the inside of the vacuum processing chamber 2 is evacuated to a vacuum suitable for etching, and the tip of the arm 8 of the transfer robot 9 is set to one of the cassette cases 7.
It is extended toward "a" and is inserted under the object 16 to be processed at the lowermost stage of the cassette case 7a. When the elevating device 5 lowers the cassette case 7a by about one step, the object 16 is placed on the arm 8 and the transfer robot 9 retracts and swivels to open the inside of the vacuum processing chamber 2 through the gate valve 3 opened. When the hoist 14 advances to any one of the hoists 14, the hoist 14 rises so as to push up the object 16 to be processed on the arm 8 to receive the object 16 to be processed, and the transfer robot 9 retreats from the vacuum processing chamber 2. After that, when the hoist 14 descends, the object 16 to be processed is installed at a predetermined position on the electrode 12. When the transfer robot 9 repeats the above operation three times, a predetermined number is installed at a predetermined position in the vacuum processing chamber 2, a reaction gas is introduced through the introduction pipe 11, and RF power is applied to the electrode 12. Plasma is generated on the front surface of the processing object 16, and the reaction gas ionized by the plasma etches the surface of each processing object 16.

Since the object 16 to be processed is directly placed on the electrode 12 and a plurality of such objects are processed at the same time, the heat applied to the object 16 to be processed due to the processing is satisfactorily transferred to the electrode 12.
The object 16 to be processed can be processed at a relatively low temperature, and the hoist 14 can be stored without being energized without protruding into the room of the vacuum processing chamber 2 so that the device configuration is simple and the room is simple. Therefore, since a plurality of objects to be processed can be processed in one vacuum processing chamber 2, the vacuum processing apparatus can be downsized.

When the processing of the object 16 is completed, the electrode 12
When the hoist 14 is lifted, the arm 8 of the transfer robot 9 is advanced toward the lower side of the hoist 14 after the gate valve 3 is opened.
4 descends and hands the object 16 to be processed onto the arm 8, and the carrier robot 9 expands and contracts and carries it to the empty shelf of the cassette case 7a. The cassette case 7a is raised by one stage of the shelf interval by the elevating device 5, and the accommodation of the processed object 16 is completed. When the accommodating operation is repeated three times and the accommodating operation is completed, the elevating device 5 is lowered to take out a new object 16 to be processed and convey it to the vacuum processing chamber 2 for the next processing. When the processing of the case 7a is completed, the object 16 to be processed in the other cassette case 7b is similarly conveyed and processed. Although the embodiment of plasma etching has been described in this embodiment, it can be applied to vacuum processing such as ashing and sputtering. Further, although the vacuum processing chamber 2 is described as an example of one chamber for convenience, two or more chambers may be connected to the vacuum chamber 1.

[0016]

As described above, according to the present invention, the object conveying means in the vacuum chamber constituting the vacuum processing apparatus is constituted by a conveying robot which can expand and contract, rotate and expand and contract in a plurality of directions. Since there are multiple hoists for placing the object to be processed in the vacuum processing chamber that is connected to the chamber and moving up and down between it and the processing object installation position below it, remove the object from the cassette case and place it in the vacuum processing chamber. The processed and processed objects can be automatically stored in the cassette case from the vacuum processing chamber, and a plurality of objects can be processed as they are as a single unit, so that the heat conduction becomes good, and many objects can be processed at low temperature. The objects to be processed can be processed, mass productivity is improved, durability is good, electrical loss is small, and the vacuum processing chamber can be made compact.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a plan view of an embodiment of the present invention.

2 is a cutaway side view of FIG.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 vacuum chamber 2 vacuum processing chambers 7a, 7b
Cassette case 9 Transfer robot 13 Lifting device 14 Hoist 16 Workpiece

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A vacuum processing system in which a vacuum chamber provided with a cassette case accommodating an object to be processed such as a wafer and an object conveying means is connected to a vacuum processing chamber for performing an etching or other vacuum processing on the object. In the apparatus, a plurality of hoists for placing an object to be processed in the vacuum processing chamber and moving it up and down between the vacuum processing chamber and a processing object installation position therebelow are provided, and the transfer means is expandable and rotatable in a plurality of directions. A vacuum processing device characterized by being configured by a transfer robot that expands and contracts. 2. The hoist extends to the outside of the vacuum processing chamber through an electrode provided in the lower portion of the vacuum processing chamber, and is lifted and lowered by a lifting device outside the vacuum processing chamber.
The vacuum processing apparatus according to. 3. The vacuum processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the cassette case is mounted on a lift table that extends to the outside through the vacuum chamber.