JPS62290616A - Wafer conveying mechanism - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To perform high speed conveyance with a simple device, by installing a carrier lock mechanism being rotated so as to cause each carrier to be opposed right to a conveying device, before conveying a wafer from plural carriers housing the wafer. CONSTITUTION:A wafer conveying mechanism 1 being set up adjacently to a wafer prober body 2 consists of both wafer carriers 3a and 3b, a pincette arm assembly 4 as a wafer conveying device and a handling arm 5. These carriers 3a and 3b are made up of mount blocks 6a and 6b having a hole 7 each, and they are moved up and down while rotated with shafts 31a and 31b as the center. The pincette arm assembly 4 mounts an arm 8 and a subchuck 9 and rotated with a shaft 41 as the center. A fact that the arm 8 is opposed right to these carries 3a and 3b is detected by a light emitting element 10, the hole 7 and a light receiving element 12, and the arm 8 goes forward and takes the wafer out or put back the wafer inspected by the prober 2. With this constitution, high speed processing takes place with a simple device.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention 3. Detailed Description of the Invention [Technical Field of the Invention] The present invention relates to a wafer transport mechanism capable of transporting a wafer to a blower for a semiconductor wafer, for example, and particularly relates to a wafer transport mechanism capable of transporting a wafer to a blower for semiconductor wafers, and in particular, a wafer transport mechanism that can transport a wafer to a blower for semiconductor wafers, and in particular, a wafer transport mechanism that can transport a wafer to a blower of a semiconductor wafer. The present invention relates to a wafer transport mechanism that can be applied to an apparatus using a wafer transport mechanism.

[Technical Background of the Invention] Due to the increase in production volume and miniaturization of LS, blowbars for testing the electrical characteristics of semiconductor integrated circuits (LSI) fabricated on cowafers have changed from manual to semi-automatic to semi-automatic and even further. It has been developed and improved to a fully automatic system. Along with this, wafer transport equipment that takes wafers from the storage capacity center, transports them to the blobbing area, and sets them is also becoming increasingly automated.

As such an automatic wafer transport device, a belt and air transport type autoloader as shown in FIG. 3 is generally used. That is, in FIG. 3, wafers 101 are taken out one by one from a supply cassette 102 installed in an elevator section, and sent to a pre-flight stage 104 by a conveyor belt 103. Mechanical course alignment is performed here. Subsequently, it is transported to a suction stage by a Bernoulli chuck 105 and vacuum chucked. The wafer after the blowing is carried by the Bernoulli chuck 105 again to the unloading position 106, placed on the conveyor belt 103, and stored in a storage cassette by the conveyor bell [.

In contrast to the loader that uses such a conveyor belt 103, a loader that uses a tweezers arm to convey the load from the cassette to the brining stage (sub-chuck) without using a belt has been developed to further reduce dust. There is. In such a wafer transfer mechanism, a wafer is taken out from a wafer supply cassette by a pin set arm, set on a sub-chuck, and after measurement, the wafer placed on the sub-chuck is held again by a tweezers arm, and the wafer is fed once again. It is designed to be stored in a slot of a cassette, and usually a plurality of cassettes (3 to 4) can be set in the wafer supply section. Therefore.

It is necessary to move the tweezers arm base on which the tweezers arms are mounted parallel to the cassettes, which increases the size of the device, complicates the drive mechanism, and increases the price.

[Object of the Invention] The present invention has been made in view of the drawbacks of the conventional wafer transport mechanism, and is capable of handling wafers without parallelly moving the wafer transport means in a wafer transport mechanism equipped with two or more wafer supply units. The purpose of the present invention is to provide a compact and low-cost wafer transport mechanism that can take out wafers.

[Summary of the Invention] In order to achieve such an object, the wafer transfer mechanism of the present invention includes two or more wafer carriers for storing transferred wafers, and for taking out and transferring the wafers stored in the wafer carriers. The present invention is characterized by comprising a transport means and a carrier lock mechanism that rotates and places each of the wafer carriers so as to face the transport means before the wafer is taken out by the transport means.

[Embodiments of the Invention] Hereinafter, a preferred embodiment in which the apparatus of the present invention is applied to a wafer transport section in a prober for semi-quadram wafers will be described with reference to the drawings.

Since semiconductor wafer probers are well known to those skilled in the art, their details will be omitted. This prober is carried into the carrier storage section with a plurality of wafers stored in the wafer carrier.The wafers are taken out one by one from the carrier storage section by a transport means and transported to the measurement position of the blower, and the measured wafers are returned to the carrier storage section. This is a configuration that returns .

The wafer transfer mechanism l shown in FIG. 1 is installed adjacent to the wafer blobber main body 2, and includes a carrier storage section 3 and a Vincent arm assembly 4 as a wafer transfer means.
and a hunt link arm 5. Carrier storage section 3
consists of wafer carriers 3a, 3b for storing wafers and carrier mounting tables 6a, 6b (Fig. 2).
Moves using WN mechanism. Further, when the wafer carriers 3a, 3b are set on the mounting tables 6a, 6b, if the carrier lock mechanism is activated by a motor (not shown), the carriers 3a, 3b are set on the mounting tables 6a, 6b.
The front faces 30a and 30b of the pin set arm assembly 4 are rotated so that they face the central axis 41 of the bin set arm assembly 4. The carrier mounting tables 6a and 6b are each provided with a hole 7 through which light from a light emitting element, which will be described later, passes.

Binset arm assembly 4 is Binset arm 8
and a sub-chuck 9, and a bin set arm 8
It has a built-in drive mechanism for the sub-chuck 9 and the central axis 4.
Rotate using 1 as the rotation axis.

The centers 31a and 31b of the carriers 3a and 3b can be aligned with each other.The bin set arm assembly 4 is provided with a light emitting element 10 such as a light emitting diode,
A light-receiving element 12 is provided at each of the intersection point A of the straight line connecting the central axis 31a of the carrier 3a and the intersection B of the straight line connecting the central axis 41 and the central axis 31b of the carrier 3b. Together with the holes 7 of 6a and 6b, they constitute one sensor means. In other words, the carrier 3a is secured to the center shaft 41 of the bin set arm assembly 4 by the locking mechanism.
When the bin set arm assembly 4 rotates toward the central axis 31a of the carrier 3a, the light from the light emitting element 10 passes through the hole 7 of the carrier mounting table 6a.
It reaches the light receiving element 12 of the frame 11 through the frame 11, and detects that the carrier 3a and the bin set arm assembly 4 are facing each other. The light receiving and emitting elements 10.12 are also used when sensing the wafers in each slot 32 in the carrier 3a. The same applies to the carrier 3b. The tweezers arm 8 moves back and forth in a direction perpendicular to the central axis 41, picks up the wafer in the carrier 3a or carrier 3b, transfers it onto the sub-chuck 9, and transfers the measured wafer on the sub-chuck 79 back to the original carrier 3a. Or store it in 3b. The sub-chuck 9 is installed on the central axis 41 of the tweezers arm assembly 4, and temporarily holds the wafer by suction and performs pre-alignment/centering.

The handling arm 5 rotates around an axis 51.

The wafer is suction-held by the arm portion 52 and transferred from above the sub-chuck 9 to the chuck top 13 of the blower main body 1, and the measured wafer is transferred from the chuck top 13 onto the sub-chuck 9.

It is desirable to provide two handling arms 5 in order to reduce the time lag from unloading to loading of the wafer.

Next, the operation of the wafer transport mechanism of this embodiment will be explained.

First, the operator sets the carriers 3a and 3b in parallel (positions indicated by end lines in the figure). The carriers 3a, 3b may be automatically loaded. Next, the carrier mounting tables 6a and 6b are rotated together by the carrier lock mechanism, and the front surfaces 30a and 30b of the carriers 3a and 3b are moved toward the tweezers arm assembly 4 (positions shown by solid lines in the figure).

That is, the carrier 3a is positioned in a direction substantially on the same circumference with respect to the rotation axis 41 of the tweezers arm 8.

Rotate 3b. Next, the tweezers arm assembly 4 is rotated so as to face the carrier 3a. At this time, the light from one light emitting element 10 passes through the hole 7 of the carrier mounting table 6a and passes through the light receiving element of the frame 11. By reaching 12,
Normal/incorrect rotation of the assembly 4 and carrier 3a is checked. Next, the carrier 3a is moved up and down by the up/down mechanism of the carrier 3a, and the slot 32
After the wafer inside is detected by the light receiving/emitting element 10.12, the tweezers arm 4 is moved to the carrier 3a side, and the wafer is held by the tweezers arm 4. While holding the wafer, move the tweezers arm 4 backwards (in the opposite direction to the carrier 3a).
, and place the wafer on the sub-chuck 9. After clear aligning/centering the wafer on the sub chuck 9, the wafer is transferred to the chuck top 13 by the handling arm 5. The wafer transferred to the chuck top 13 is probed after fine alignment. The wafer after blowing is held again by the handling arm 5, transferred onto the sub-chuck 9, and returned to the original slot 32 of the carrier 3a using the tweezers arm 4.

As is clear from the above embodiments, this wafer transfer @ structure includes an assembly mounting a tweezers arm and a sub-chuck between a plurality of wafer supply units and the prober body, and the wafer supply unit and the tweezers By making each wafer supply section and assembly rotatable so that the arms face each other, wafers can be taken out from multiple wafer supply sections without parallel movement of the pincer 1 to the arm base (assembly), making the JA equipment compact and compact. The price can be lowered. Furthermore, pre-alignment can be freely performed on the sub-chuck regardless of the wafer diameter, making it possible to handle various wafers.

[Effects of the Invention] As explained above, according to the present invention, the carrier containing the wafer is rotated toward the transport means before taking out the wafer, so that the wafer can be taken out from a plurality of carriers by the rotational movement of the transport means. High-speed conveyance is possible.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

1 and 2 are diagrams schematically showing a wafer transport mechanism of the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a conventional wafer transport mechanism. 1...Wafer transport mechanism 2...Prober main body 3a, 3b...Carrier 31a, 31h
... Center shaft 4 ... Tweezers arm assembly (transport means) 41 ... Center shaft 5 ... Handling arms 6a, 6b ... Carrier mounting table 7 ...... Hole 8 ... Tweezers arm (transport means) 9 ...
...Sub chuck 10...Light emitting element 11...Frame 12...Light receiving element 13...Chuck top agent Patent attorney Mr. Moritani Figure 1 Figure 2

Claims (1)

[Claims] two or more wafer carriers for storing the transferred wafers, a transport means for taking out and transporting the wafers stored in the wafer carriers, and transporting each of the wafer carriers before taking out the wafers by the transport means. A wafer transport mechanism characterized by comprising a carrier lock mechanism that rotates and is installed to face the means.