Heating – Processes of heating or heater operation – Treating an article – container – batch or body as a unit
Patent
1997-08-04
2000-03-14
Hoang, Tu Ba
Heating
Processes of heating or heater operation
Treating an article, container, batch or body as a unit
432 5, 432241, 432152, F27D 300
Patent
active
060364823
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a heat treatment method and an apparatus.
BACKGROUND ART
As semiconductor device manufacturing methods, there are various processing methods such as oxidizing processing for oxidizing a silicon surface at a high temperature to obtain an oxide film (an insulating film) on the silicon surface, and diffusing processing for heating a silicon layer formed with an impurity layer on the surface thereof to thermally diffuse the impurities in the silicon layer.
As the heat treatment apparatus used for oxidizing and diffusion processing, a vertical heat treatment apparatus of the batch type is well known in the art. In this heat treatment apparatus, however, in the case where an extremely thin film or a shallow position matching is required as when a capacitor insulating film or a gate oxide film is formed or when the diffusion processing is required for impurity ions, for instance, the film quality, the film thickness, and the diffusion depth are all subjected to serious influence by the thermal budget (thermal history). In the batch type heat treatment apparatus, in particular, there exists a large difference in thermal history between the wafers first carried into a reaction pipe and the wafers carried last into the reaction pipe.
To overcome this problem, a single wafer type heat treatment apparatus has been so far studied, by improving a heat treating furnace of the above-mentioned heat treatment apparatus. In this apparatus, after a wafer has been mounted on a wafer holder member one by one and then carried to a predetermined position in a reaction pipe, the carried wafer is heated quickly. This single wafer type heat treatment apparatus will be explained hereinbelow with reference to FIG. 18. In the drawing, a heat treating region of a vertical reaction pipe 1 is enclosed by a heat insulating body 10. In this reaction pipe, a supply pipe 11 and an exhaust pipe 12 are provided so that a processing gas can flow from the upper portion to the lower portion thereof.
In the reaction pipe 1, in order to secure the throughput, a wafer holder member 13 is disposed so as to be movable up and down at a speed of about 150 to 200 mm/sec, for instance. On the wafer holder member 13, a single wafer W is mounted by use of a wafer carrying member (not shown) disposed in a shift and mount chamber 14 disposed under the reaction pipe 1. Therefore, after having been moved upward to a predetermined position, the wafer W is heated to a predetermined heat treatment temperature by a heating section 15 composed of a resistance heater 15a and a heat uniformalizing body 15b, and further oxidized under atmospheric pressure, for instance by supplying a processing gas into the reaction pipe 1 through the processing gas supply pipe 11.
Further, a shutter 16 which functions as a light shutting valve is movably disposed between the reaction pipe 1 and the shift and mount chamber 14 on the outer circumferential side of the shift and mount chamber 14, in order to cool the processed wafer W and to reduce the influence of the thermal history of the wafer W carried into the shift and mount chamber 14. This is because the thermal history is caused by the direct radiant heat radiated from the heating section 15. Further, the shutter 16 is formed with two semicircular cutout portions 16a and 16b at each end thereof. These cutout portions 16a and 16b are brought into tight contact with an outer circumference of a lift shaft 17 of the wafer holder member 13 when closed. Further, a purge gas supply pipe (not shown) is disposed to purge a region communicating with a lower side (lower than the exhaust pipe 12) in the reaction pipe 1 by use of a purge gas (e.g., inert gas).
In the prior art heat treatment apparatus as described above, however, when the wafer W is moved upward to a predetermined position from the shift and mount chamber 14 by use of the wafer holder member 13, the wafer W is moved upward in the reaction pipe 1 at a high speed of about 150 to 200 mm/sec against the flow of the processing g
REFERENCES:
patent: 4857689 (1989-08-01), Lee
patent: 5429498 (1995-07-01), Okase et al.
patent: 5443648 (1995-08-01), Ohkase
patent: 5462397 (1995-10-01), Iwabuchi
patent: 5536918 (1996-07-01), Ohkase et al.
patent: 5571010 (1996-11-01), Okase
Hoang Tu Ba
Lu Jiping
Tokyo Electron Limited
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