JPS62102973A - Full automatic polisher - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To achieve full automatic loading and unloading of a workpiece with respect to a polishing head by providing the machine body with a delivery mechanism. CONSTITUTION:When polishing is completed in a full automatic polisher, rotation of a polishing head 3 is stopped and it is again located to a receiving position X. Through turning of a delivery mechanism 20, a gripping mechanism 23 is moved to the receiving position X for unloading a workpiece a held by holding means 7 of the polishing head 3. When the completed workpiece a is gripped by the gripping mechanism 23, the delivery mechanism 20 is turned in the direction of an arrow b and inverted to put the work surface upside. Then, after the gripping mechanism 23 is moved forward to transfer the workpiece a onto a conveying path 12, the conveyer belt travels to convey the workpiece a to an ejecting section 18. At this position, the workpiece a is gripped by an ejecting mechanism and stored vertically in a cassette 27 in a storage station 26.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field of the Invention] The present invention relates to a fully automatic polishing apparatus for polishing a workpiece such as a semiconductor wafer.

[Technical background of the invention and its problems]

When polishing semiconductor wafers, etc., a large number of wafers are attached using wax or the like to a reference plate made of a material such as ceramic, metal, or glass, and the wafers are placed on the polishing disk using the reference plate. and polish the wafer while rotating the polishing disk (
It was growling.

However, as wafers have recently become larger in diameter, it has become difficult to remove the reference plate I after polishing, and care has been required in handling the wafers.

In order to solve these problems, for example,
As shown in Japanese Patent No. 9-129660, a single-sided lamp board that automates wafer wrapping is known. This has the function of loading and unloading the wafer to be processed onto the lapping disk, and allows the processing head to press the wafer and rotate it around and around its axis to perform lapping automatically. It is something.

However, since the single-sided lapping machine is equipped with a loader for loading the wafer onto the lapping disc and an unloader for unloading the wafer from the lapping disc,
The work of feeding wafers to be wrapped into the equipment body and storing the wrapped wafers is done manually by workers.In order to improve productivity, this single-sided lapping machine is installed in multiple units. If they are operated at the same time, there is an inconvenience that much labor is required to supply wafers to each device and to carry out wafers from each device.

[Purpose of the invention]

This invention was made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and its purpose is to automatically load and unload a workpiece to and from a polishing head, and also to be able to automatically load and unload a workpiece to and from a polishing head, and also to be able to automatically load and unload a workpiece to and from a polishing head, and also to be able to automatically load and unload a workpiece to and from a polishing head, and also to be able to automatically load and unload a workpiece to and from a polishing head. To provide a fully automatic polishing device capable of fully automatic polishing without any manual intervention.

[Summary of the Invention] In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a conveyance path having a workpiece supply section on one end side and a workpiece discharge section on the other end side, and A delivery mechanism is provided that loads the workpieces supplied to the supply section one by one onto the polishing head, unloads the polished workpieces, and supplies them to the conveyance path, and a plurality of apparatus main bodies are provided. When installed in parallel, the conveyance paths of each device main body are arranged in a straight line, and a common supply section for workpieces is formed on the upstream side of conveyance, and a common storage section for workpieces is formed on the downstream side of conveyance. The reason is that it is configured so that it can be policed automatically.

[Embodiments of the invention]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 to 4.

Figure 1 shows the entire fully automatic polishing device.
is the main body of the device. A polishing disk 2 that is rotatably driven by a drive mechanism (not shown) is mounted on the top of the device main body 1.
A polishing head 3 is provided above the polishing head 3 to face the polishing head 3.

That is, a swing shaft 4 is protruded from the upper part of the apparatus main body 1, and a swing box 5 having a rotational drive source is provided inside the swing shaft 4. The swing box 5 is provided with a rotating shaft 6 that projects downward, and the polishing head 3 is fixed to the tip of the rotating shaft 6. Further, the rotating shaft 6 is provided so as to be movable up and down by an air cylinder (not shown), and is configured to move the polishing head 3 forward and backward with respect to the polishing disk 2. The lower surface of the polishing head 3 is provided with a holding part 7 that holds one of the workpieces, such as a semiconductor wafer, by vacuum suction or by adsorbing a foamed urethane sheet moistened with water. can be pressed against the polishing circle M2 with a constant pressing force. Further, a head cleaning brush 8 for cleaning the holding portion 7 of the polishing head 3 is provided on the upper surface of the apparatus main body 1 located on the rocking trajectory of the polishing head 3.
is provided. Further, in a part facing the polishing disk 2, a polishing t5 is provided which is stretched over the upper surface of the polishing disk 2.
An abrasive cloth cleaning brush 9 for cleaning the polishing cloth 2a is provided. This polishing cloth cleaning brush 9 is provided on a swinging arm 11 attached to a drive shaft 10 that can move up and down and swing, and is further rotated by a rotary drive source built into the swinging arm 11 to clean the polishing cloth 2a. It is supposed to be done.

On the other hand, at the front edge of the upper part of the apparatus main body 1, a conveyance path 12 for conveying the workpiece a is provided. This conveyance path 12 is composed of a plurality of conveyor belts 14.14 stretched between pulleys 13.13, and the workpiece a is placed on the conveyor belts 14.14 and conveyed in the direction of the arrow. It is configured. Furthermore, this w1 feed path 12 is covered with a tunnel-shaped cover 15, and this cover 15
A pure water shower 16 is installed inside to prevent the workpiece a from drying out. Furthermore, a supply section 17 for the workpiece a is provided at one end of the conveyance path 12, and a delivery section 18 for the workpiece a is provided at the other end. And supply section 17
There are many workpieces to be polished...
A delivery mechanism 20 is provided in the upper part of the apparatus main body 1 located near the cassette 19. To explain this delivery mechanism 20, 21 is a guide rail, and this guide rail 21 is provided with a drive mechanism 22 constituted by a rotary solenoid or the like so that it can move forward and backward with respect to the conveyance path 12 and can freely turn. There is. This drive machine 122 has a gripping mechanism 23 for gripping the workpiece a.
is provided.

The transfer mechanism 20 grips and inverts one workpiece a on the conveyance path 12, and then rotates in the direction of arrow A to load the workpiece a into the holding part 7 of the polishing head 3 and perform the polishing process. After unloading the processed workpiece vIJa from the polishing head 3, the polishing head rotates in the direction of the arrow. Furthermore, it has a function of inverting the workpiece a and supplying it to the conveyance path 12 with the polished surface facing up.

Roughly speaking, a table 24 is installed on the end side of the packaging main body 1 facing the unloading section 18 of the conveyance path 12, and a table 24, which is basically the same as the delivery mechanism 20, is installed on the upper part of the table 24.
A take-out structure 25 of M construction is provided. The take-out mechanism 25 grips the workpiece a on the fetal passage 12 and supplies it to a cassette 27 provided in the storage section 26.

Note that 28 represents the polishing head 3 and the conveyance path 12I3.
This is a machine control device that controls the delivery machine V420 and the delivery machine V420.

Next, the operation of the fully automatic polishing device configured as described above will be explained. The workpieces a stored in one cassette are supplied to the conveyance path 12 one by one, and the peripheral edges of the supplied workpieces a are gripped by the gripping mechanism 23 of the delivery mechanism 20. When the workpiece a is gripped, the pushing mechanism 22 rotates backward on the guide rail 21 and then turns in the direction of arrow A. On the other hand, the polishing head 3 swings together with the swing box 5 to rotate the polishing disk 2.
The workpiece a gripped by the gripping mechanism 23 is loaded into the holding portion 7 of the polishing head 3 because the polishing head 3 is waiting at the transfer position X at a predetermined position. In this case, the workpiece a is attracted to the holding part 7 because the holding part 7 has a vacuum adsorption function or a water adsorption ability.

When the loading of the workpiece a is completed, the polishing head 3 turns to face the rotating polishing disk 2,
While rotating, the workpiece a is pressed against the polishing cloth 2a by a constant pressing force and is swung in the direction of the arrow. Therefore, it is possible to polish the workpiece a by using almost the entire area of the polishing cloth 2a as FiItg. After the processing is completed, the polishing cloth cleaning brush 9 rotates and swings to clean the surface of the polishing cloth 2a, so that polishing is always performed with the cleaned polishing surface. After cleaning and drying, the cleaning brush runs away in direction A or B and is being searched for. When polishing is completed in this way, the polishing hand 3
stops rotating and returns to the transfer position X. Then, the transfer mechanism 20 rotates, the gripping mechanism 23 moves to the transfer position X, and unloads the workpiece a held in the holding part 7 of the polishing head 3. When the workpiece a that has been polished is gripped by the gripping mechanism 23, the delivery mechanism 20 rotates in the direction of the arrow and is reversed so that the processed surface is facing upward. Next, the gripping mechanism 23 moves forward to transfer the workpiece a onto the conveyance path 12. The transferred workpiece at is transported in the direction of the unloading section 18 by the running of the tv8 transport belt 14.14, and during transport, the workpiece a is prevented from drying by pure water sprayed from the pure water shower 16. This makes post-process cleaning easier. When the workpiece a reaches the limiting part 18, it is taken out l1jl +
(The workpiece a is gripped by i! 25, and
It is stored in the case/tray 27 in an upright position.

When a plurality of fully automatic polishing apparatuses configured in this way are installed in parallel, for example two, as shown in FIG.
A conveyance path 12.12 is arranged in a straight line facing the supply section 17 of the conveyance path 12.12. By placing the cassette 19 containing the workpiece a on the transport upstream side of the transport path 12.12 by 3Ω, this force cellar 1-19 can be used as a common supply section 29, and on the transport downstream side. The storage section 26 can be used as a common storage section 30. Then, the workpiece 11'Ja from the two common supply parts is loaded into the polishing head 3 of the first polishing device A, unloaded and supplied to the conveyance path 12 again,
It can be loaded onto the polishing head 3 of B or unloaded and supplied to the conveyance path 12 again. Therefore, even if a plurality of polishing apparatuses are installed in parallel and operated simultaneously, the supply section 17 and storage section 26 for the workpiece a
can be set to one location each. In this case, instead of providing the cassette 19 in the common supply section 29, it is also possible to connect it to a previous process, such as an etching process or a primary polishing process, and by checking the workpiece a with a position sensor, etc. It is possible to connect as many polishing devices as possible.

FIG. 5 shows another embodiment of the present invention, in which a supply conveyance path 31 is provided for supplying the workpiece a to be processed on one side of the polishing disk 2, and a supply conveyance path 31 for supplying the workpiece a to be processed is provided on the other side. A carry-out conveyance path 32 is provided for carrying out the processed workpiece a. With this configuration, the supply conveyance path 31
The workpiece a can be loaded into the polishing l\d 33 and unloaded from the unloading conveyance path 32, so that the flow of the workpiece a can be made unidirectional. In addition, when the first polishing device fiA and the second polishing device B are installed in series, by providing a buffer 34 in the middle of the supply conveyance path 31, it is possible to Workpiece a can be temporarily scratched.

In the above embodiment, when the workpiece is vacuum-adsorbed, the large-diameter pin of the reference plate is attached with an adhesive such as wax to improve the occurrence of variations in wafer flatness due to variations in the adhesive layer. can do.

(Effects of the Invention) As explained above, according to the present invention, it is possible to automatically load and unload the workpiece to and from the polishing head, and even when a plurality of polishing bodies are installed in parallel, the workpiece can be processed automatically. The blade feed paths of objects can be connected in a straight line. Therefore, polishing can be performed fully automatically without manual intervention, and productivity can be improved.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an overall perspective view of a polishing device showing an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a schematic plan view, FIG. 3 is a sectional view of a conveyance path, and FIG. FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram showing another embodiment of the present invention. 1...Device body, 2...Polishing Enyu, 3...
Polishing head, 12... Conveyance path, 17... Supply section, 18... Carrying out section, 20... Delivery arrangement, 29.
...Common supply section, 30...Common storage section.

Claims (1)

[Claims] an apparatus main body, a conveyance path provided in the apparatus main body and having a workpiece supply section at one end and a workpiece unloading section at the other end; It consists of a delivery mechanism that loads the workpieces one by one into the polishing head, unloads the polished workpieces, and supplies them to the conveyance path, and when a plurality of the device bodies are installed in parallel, each device body A fully automatic polishing apparatus characterized in that the conveyance paths are arranged in a straight line, and a common supply section for workpieces is formed on the upstream side of the conveyance, and a common storage section for the workpieces is formed on the downstream side of the conveyance.