KR20010107239A - Apparatus for holding in check wafer broken adapted to semiconductor manufacture equipments - Google Patents

Abstract

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a semiconductor manufacturing facility, and more particularly, to a wafer misplacement prevention device capable of preventing wafer breakage in advance by detecting a mislocation of a wafer in advance. Wafer misplacement prevention device for this purpose; Sensing unit for generating a detection signal when the position of the wafer is detected by the light emitting sensor and the light receiving sensor spaced apart from a predetermined position that can detect the position defect of the wafer, and detecting the position defect of the wafer from the sensing unit It is characterized by having a control unit for indicating and alarming the occurrence of an error and generating an interlock when a signal is received.

Description

Wafer placement prevention device applied to semiconductor manufacturing facilities {APPARATUS FOR HOLDING IN CHECK WAFER BROKEN ADAPTED TO SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURE EQUIPMENTS}

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a semiconductor manufacturing facility, and more particularly, to a wafer misplacement prevention device capable of preventing wafer breakage in advance by detecting a mislocation of a wafer in advance.

The most fundamental requirement in the manufacturing process of the semiconductor manufacturing equipment that produces the semiconductor will be the failure prevention of the wafer (Wafer). Wafer defects in the semiconductor manufacturing process adversely affect other wafers, and in some cases, reject processing of the entire wafer is inevitable.

Wafer misplacement, which occurs as the wafer is misplaced among the wafer defects in the semiconductor manufacturing process, may result in wafer breakage, which causes impurities in the broken wafer to contaminate other wafers.

Referring to the structure of the conventional semiconductor manufacturing equipment through Figure 1, and looks at the cause of the wafer position defects occurring in the conventional semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

FIG. 1 is a view illustrating a wafer misplacement structure of a load lock chamber applied to a conventional semiconductor manufacturing facility, and loads / unloads a cassette 17 on which wafers 19 are mounted. The structure of the cassette elevator 21 which moves up and down for loading / unloading and the structure of the fixed upper well and the down well are shown.

When the wafer 19 is not completely returned to the cassette 17 during the process, the wafer 19 collides with the mounting plate 15 when the cassette 17 is unloaded. Will occur. Conventional semiconductor manufacturing facilities do not have an interlock device capable of detecting a positional defect of such a wafer.

On the other hand, in the conventional semiconductor manufacturing facilities, calibration is performed on a regular or irregular basis, but this corrects a wafer distortion caused by a problem of the robot itself and a cassette defect. It was relatively small compared to the case of wafer breakage due to the mislocation of the wafer.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a wafer misplacement prevention device that can prevent wafer breakage in advance by detecting a misplacement of a wafer in which the wafer position is displaced in order to solve the above problems.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a device for preventing wafer position defects applied to a semiconductor manufacturing facility, wherein the light emitting sensor and the light receiving sensor are provided to be spaced apart from each other at a predetermined position to detect a position defect of the wafer. A sensing unit for generating a detection signal when a defective wafer is detected, and a control unit for indicating an alarm occurrence and an alarm and generating an interlock when a detection of a position defect of the wafer is received from the sensing unit. do.

1 is a view showing a wafer misplaced structure of a load lock chamber applied to a conventional semiconductor manufacturing equipment

2 is a view showing a wafer misplacement prevention structure of a load lock chamber applied to a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

3 is a circuit diagram illustrating a wafer misplacement prevention apparatus according to a specific embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 4 is a block diagram of a wafer misplacement prevention apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention

5 is a control flow chart for controlling in advance the occurrence of a wafer misplacement according to an embodiment of the present invention

Explanation of symbols on the main parts of the drawings

11: upper well 13: lower well

15: mountain plate 17: cassette

19: wafer 21: cassette elevator

25: light emitting sensor 27: light receiving sensor

100: sensing unit 200: control unit

210; Controller 220: amplifier

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. First of all, in adding reference numerals to the components of each drawing, it should be noted that the same components have the same reference numerals as much as possible even if they are displayed on different drawings. In addition, in the following description, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a more thorough understanding of the present invention, such as specific processing flows. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details. Detailed descriptions of well-known functions and configurations that are determined to unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the present invention will be omitted.

2 is a view showing a wafer misplacement prevention structure of a load lock chamber applied to a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, in which the wafer 19 is completely removed from the cassette 17 during a process. Install a device in the facility to detect the condition that is not returned. That is, the light emitting sensor 25 and the light receiving sensor 27 are installed at a predetermined position capable of detecting the misaligned position of the wafer. For example, the light emitting sensor 25 is installed under the mountain plate 15 positioned in the upper well 11, and the light receiving sensor 27 emits light on the upper part of the lower well 23 spaced apart from the light emitting sensor 25. It is installed at a position that can receive the light emitted from the sensor 25. Preferred positions of the light emitting sensor 25 and the light receiving sensor 27 are that when the wafer 19 mounted on the cassette 17 moves vertically of the cassette elevator 21, the wafer 19 moves to the mountain plate 15. It is a position that can sense that the wafer 19 is separated from the cassette mounting position so as to prevent it from being damaged by being hit. 2, the light emitted from the light emitting sensor 25 is received by the light receiving sensor 27 when the wafer 19 is correctly positioned at the mounting position of the cassette. If is a positional deviation from the mounting position of the cassette, the light to be received from the light emitting sensor 25 to the light receiving sensor 27 is blocked by the misplaced wafer 19 is separated from the mounting position and positional defect Can be detected.

FIG. 3 is a circuit diagram illustrating an apparatus for preventing a wafer misplacement according to a specific embodiment of the present invention. The operation of the apparatus for preventing a wafer misplacement according to the present invention will be described through the circuit shown in FIG.

On the circuit, if a wafer misalignment condition occurs with the output of the sensor at the PC817 input, a "high" active is generated on pin 4 of the 4538. Output occurs according to the set CR time constant value. This output goes to the next stage with "Low" active. At this time, since the output of PC817 is 'high', the final output is 'high' to 'low' until the NAND gate of 4011 is inverted and reset, flowing the base current of transistors Q1 and Q11 to collect the collector and emitter. The relay is driven by the conduction between and interlock is generated as the relay. In addition, the buzzer is operated to generate an alarm. If the misplacement of the wafer is recovered by the operator's action, the relay is automatically restored.

4 is a block diagram of an apparatus for preventing wafer misplacement according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, wherein the sensing unit 100 and the wafer of the sensing unit 100 that detect a positional misalignment of the wafer 19 are large. It is composed of a control unit 200 in charge of the control according to the position bad sensing operation.

The sensing unit 100 includes the light emitting sensor 25 and the light receiving sensor 27 to detect the wafer position defect as described above to generate a wafer position defect detection signal.

The controller 200 may include an amplifier 220 for amplifying a wafer misplacement detection signal generated by the sensing unit 100, a controller 210 for receiving and processing the amplified wafer misplacement detection signal, and an error. It is composed of a display unit 211 for indicating the occurrence and the buzzer 230 for alarming the occurrence of the alarm. In addition, the controller 210 generates an interlock as described in the circuit operation of FIG. 4 when a misplacement of the wafer occurs.

As an example, the sensing unit 100 is installed in a load lock (or vacuum), and the control unit 200 is installed in a system bottom.

5 is a control flow chart for pre-controlling the occurrence of wafer misplacement according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. In step 501, the controller 210 inputs the input from the sensing unit 100 to the wafer misplacement. Check for a high signal that can be judged. In case the input from the sensing unit 100 is 'high', the process proceeds to step 502. In step 502, the controller 210 operates an internal timer. The internal timer is allowed to run only for a set time. In step 503, the controller 210 checks whether the input from the sensing unit 100 is 'high' even after the internal timer is driven. In the case of steps 501 to 503, the case where the 'high' signal generated from the sensing unit 100 lasts for a predetermined time is shown as an example of determining the position of the wafer. If the input continues to be 'high' after the set time elapses in step 503, the controller 210 recognizes this as an error in step 504 and drives the internal alarm mode. Thus, the controller 210 proceeds to step 505 to drive the buzzer 23 to generate an alarm, and to display a message indicating an error occurrence on the display unit 211 and to flash the light emitting diode. In addition, the controller 210 generates an interlock.

In the above process, when the input generated from the sensing unit 100 is not a 'high' signal, the operation flow of FIG. 5 is not performed.

On the other hand, the detailed description of the present invention has been described with reference to specific embodiments, of course, various modifications are possible without departing from the scope of the invention. Therefore, the scope of the present invention should not be limited to the described embodiments, but should be defined not only by the scope of the following claims, but also by the equivalents of the claims.

As described above, the present invention provides a device for preventing wafer misplacement, which is applied to a semiconductor fabrication facility, in order to detect wafer misplacement during a process of semiconductor fabrication facility, which prevents wafer damage. There is an advantage to avoid.

Claims (3)

A sensing unit for generating a detection signal when a defective wafer is detected by a light emitting sensor and a light receiving sensor which are spaced apart from a predetermined position to detect a defective position of the wafer, and And a control unit configured to display an alarm and alarm an error occurrence and generate an interlock when the misalignment detection signal of the wafer is received from the sensing unit. The method of claim 1, And the control unit generates the error indication, alarm, and interlock only when the wafer position defect detection signal is received from the sensing unit for a predetermined time or more. The method of claim 1, And an amplifier for amplifying the wafer misalignment detection signal sensed by the sensing unit.