JPS6176262A - Polishing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To make a large caliber work polishable with a small-sized device so efficiently and highly accurately, by automatically polishing the work of a semiconductor wafer or the like to be conveyed as being held individually by means of a conveying device with a polishing device piece by piece. CONSTITUTION:A wafer 1 held by a carrier 3 is conveyed in a right direction with endless rotational movement of this carrier 3. And, it is fed to a rough polishing part 9, and in a state that an upper surface plate 15 and a lower surface plate 13 are made contact with both sides, top and bottom of the wafer, the lower surface plate 13 is rotated and moved by a motor 14 whereby both upper and lower sides are subjected to rough polishing. Afterward, the wafer 1 is fed to a washing part 10 and the rough polished surface is washed clean by flushing water to be spouted out of washing nozzles 10a and 10b, while the wafer 1 after being washed is conveyed to a finish polishing part 11, and both upper and lower surfaces are polished for finishing by the upper surface plate 15 and the lower surface plate 13. Next, the water 1, after its finish polishing is over, is recovered from the carrier 3 onto an unloader 4 by an arm 12. Thus, a large caliber work or the wafer 1 is polishable piece by piece with a small-sized device.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Technical Field] The present invention relates to a polishing technique, and in particular, to a technique that is applicable and effective for polishing semi-intrusive wafers. [Background Technique] Mirror polishing processing is performed on semiconductor wafers. When applying
A possible method is to place a plurality of wafers on a polishing plate and polish them using a punch method.

However, with such a bunch-type polishing method, there are problems in that as the diameter of the wafer increases, the device becomes significantly larger, and the throughput is low, resulting in poor space efficiency. Furthermore, since a plurality of wafers are polished at the same time, processing accuracy may not always be good.

Regarding wafer polishing, please refer to Kogyo Kenkyukai, 1983.
"Advanced LSI Manufacturing/Testing Equipment Guidebook" Electronic Materials November 1983 issue, published on November 15, 2013, P49-P
It is explained in detail in 56.

[Purpose of the invention]

An object of the present invention is to provide a technique that can efficiently polish a large-diameter object to be polished using a small-sized device.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a technique that allows highly accurate polishing.

The above and other objects and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the description of this specification and the accompanying drawings.

[Summary of the invention]

A brief overview of typical inventions disclosed in this application is as follows.

That is, by automatically polishing the objects to be polished one by one by the polishing means that are individually held and transported by the conveying means, even large-diameter objects to be polished can be polished with a small device, and the above objective can be achieved. It is something.

〔Example〕

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a polishing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is an enlarged partial sectional view of the polishing section thereof.

The polishing apparatus in this embodiment is for mirror polishing of semiconductor wafers such as silicon.

In this polishing apparatus, a wafer 1, which is an object to be polished, is transported from a loader 2 by a carrier 3 of the polishing apparatus and subjected to a polishing process, and then recovered onto an unloader 4.

Therefore, an arm 5 for transferring the wafer l on the loader 2 onto the carrier 3 is provided on the starting end side of the carrier 3 to hold the wafer l by vacuum suction or the like and to be able to swing by a predetermined angle.

The carrier 3 has an endless belt type structure and has wafer holding holes 6 at predetermined intervals along its length. The wafer holding hole 6 is used to accommodate and hold the wafer l therein while polishing it during transportation. In order to prevent the wafer l from falling from the wafer holding hole 6, an endless belt type guide belt 7 is disposed below the carrier 3 so as to move around rollers 8 in the same direction as the carrier 3.

A rough polishing section 9 is arranged downstream of the arm 5 (on the right side in FIG. 1), and in this rough polishing section 9, the wafer 1 is subjected to rough polishing.

On the downstream side of the rough polishing section 9, a cleaning section io consisting of cleaning nozzles 10a and 10b for cleaning the wafer 1 with water or the like is provided.

Further, on the downstream side (right side) of the cleaning section 10, there is provided a final polishing section 11 that performs a final polishing process on the wafer l that has been roughly polished.

In order to transfer the wafer l that has been finished polished in this finishing polishing section 11 from the downstream end of the carrier 3 onto the unloader 4, an arm 12 is provided to hold the wafer l by vacuum suction or the like and to be able to swing by a predetermined angle. It is being

The rough polishing section 9 and the final polishing section 11 have different purposes for rough polishing and final polishing, but both have a polishing mechanism as schematically shown in FIG. 2.

That is, this polishing mechanism polishes both sides of the wafer 1, and a lower surface plate 3 for polishing the lower surface of the wafer 1 is provided under the wafer 1 so as to be forcibly rotated by a motor 14. It is being On the other hand, on the upper side of the wafer 1, a shoe foot 1915 is provided. This upper surface plate 1
5 can be moved up and down by the cylinder 16, but in this embodiment, it is not forced to rotate, and the wafer l is rotated by the rotation of the lower surface plate 13.
Idle rotation is performed at the rotation of . However, the upper surface plate 15 can also be forced to rotate.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be explained.

A wafer 1, which is an object to be polished, is held by an arm 5 from above a loader 2 and set in a wafer holding hole 6 of a carrier 3. The wafer l held by the carrier 3 in this manner is transported to the right in the figure as the carrier 3 endlessly rotates and is sent to the rough polishing section 9.

In the rough polishing section 9, the wafer 1 has an upper surface plate 15 on both its upper and lower surfaces.
By rotationally driving the lower surface plate 13 by the motor 14 with the lower surface plate 13 in contact with the lower surface plate 13, the upper and lower surfaces are rough-polished.

Thereafter, the wafer I is sent to the cleaning section 10, and the cleaning nozzle 1
The roughly polished surface is cleaned by the cleaning water jetted from 0a and 10b.

The cleaned wafer 1 is transported to a final polishing section 11, and its upper and lower surfaces are polished by an upper surface plate 15 and a lower surface plate 13.

The wafer l that has been finished being polished is recovered from the carrier 3 onto the unloader 4 by the arm 12.

In this way, the wafers 1 are sequentially polished on both sides in a single-wafer manner.

〔effect〕

(l) By individually polishing the workpieces in a single-wafer manner, even large-diameter workpieces can be efficiently polished using a small device.

(2) High-precision polishing can be performed using the il+.

(3) According to (1) above, automatic polishing can be realized.

(4) According to (1) above, space efficiency can be improved.

(5) The above-mentioned ill allows for easy adaptation to changes in the size of the object to be processed.

Although the invention made by the present inventor has been specifically explained based on Examples above, the present invention is not limited to the Examples (although it is possible to make various changes without departing from the gist of the invention). Not even.

For example, a fixed stone may be driven to rotate either the top or bottom, or both sides.In that case, the advantage is that by making the rotational speeds of both surface plates different from each other, it is easy to distinguish between the front and back surfaces. be.

[Application field]

In the above explanation, the invention made by the present inventor was mainly applied to the polishing of wafers, which is the background field of application, but the present invention is not limited thereto. Can be widely applied to polishing.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a polishing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is an enlarged partial sectional view of the polishing section thereof. l...Wafer (object to be polished), 2...Loader, 3...
・Carrier (transportation means), 4... Unloader, 5...
・Arm, 6... Wafer holding hole, 7... Guide belt, 8... Roller, 9... Rough polishing section, IO... Cleaning section, toa, tob... Cleaning nozzle, 11. ...Final polishing section, 12...Arm, 13...Lower surface plate (polishing means), 14...Motor (drive means), 15...Upper surface plate (polishing means), 16...Cylinder .

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A conveying means for holding and conveying the object to be polished, and a means for contacting both surfaces of the object to be polished, which are individually held and conveyed by the conveying means, and at least one of which is rotationally driven. A polishing apparatus comprising: a polishing means; and a driving means for rotationally driving at least one of the polishing means. 2. The polishing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the conveying means is an endless conveyor having holes for holding the object to be polished. 3. The polishing apparatus according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the object to be polished is a wafer, and each wafer is polished one by one.