Cleaning and liquid contact with solids – Processes – With work or work parts movable during treatment
Reexamination Certificate
1999-02-19
2001-12-11
Markoff, Alexander (Department: 1746)
Cleaning and liquid contact with solids
Processes
With work or work parts movable during treatment
C134S026000, C134S902000, C134S018000, C438S908000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06328815
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
(1) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the fabrication of integrated circuit devices, and more particularly to a new configuration of a multiple chamber vacuum processing system (MCVPS) for the purpose of improving the positional stability of the wafer mark shielding process,
(2) Description of the Prior Art
The prior art of semiconductor processing including plasma etching, CVD deposition, physical sputtering, etc. has progressed from single vacuum chamber batch-type systems performing a single processing operation upon a plurality of small diameter single part-numbered wafers made of semiconductor material which typically were manually or semi-automatically loaded into the process chamber for the purpose of high throughput.
Since that time, semiconductor circuit design requirements, manufacturing economics and necessary higher product yields have driven the industry to develop and utilize manufacturing equipment to operate on relatively fewer but much larger wafers possibly containing a multiple of part numbers with finer geometry and dimensions but requiring precise automatic material handling. Such yield enhancement and flexibility needs demanded a higher level of automated in-situ integrated processing.
Manufacturing subsystems which are capable of doing a multiple of processes upon larger wafers in-situ became available in the mid 1980s.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,951,601 (Maydan et al., 1990) discloses an integrated modular multiple chamber vacuum processing system (IMMCVPS) which is capable of integrating a variety of types of integrated circuit processes such as deposition, sputtering, etching and annealing. It includes a robotics R-&thgr; transfer means to move a wafer to and from external and internal wafer cartridge loading elevators as well as to and from single axis robotics mechanisms within each of the multiply appended process chambers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,779 (Mizuno et al., 1996) illustrates in a context figure another of the prior art integrated module multi-chamber processing systems. Generic to this illustration is an R-&thgr; transfer means within a single vacuum transfer chamber with six process chambers attached.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,292,393 (Maydan et al., 1994) further discloses the details of the R-&thgr; robotics transfer system and its operation together with those of selected individual chamber cooperating single axis transfer means. More importantly, it illustrates how a plurality of such transfer chambers, utilizing only one external wafer cartridge, can be concatenated to provide a more complex system to handle additional serial or parallel processing operations. Although precision of the R-&thgr; transfer movements is controlled by the rotation of concentric drive shafts, there is no teaching about maintaining the precise location, alignment or orientation of the wafer as it is transferred between the multitude of process steps, especially when the process steps require using concatenated transfer chambers.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The principal object of the present invention is to define a configuration of a multiply concatenated integrated modular multiple chamber vacuum processing system (IMMCVPS) that requires wafer alignment or orientation of the wafer as required in the appended process chambers.
A second objective of the present invention is to utilize the above mentioned configuration in a method that will minimize the positional error of a wafer within a process chamber.
It is a further object of the present invention to define a configuration of integrated modular multiple chamber vacuum processing systems (IMMCVPS) with the above advantages which does not affect the maximum processing capability of such a system when it includes the necessary alignment or orientation means.
It is another object of the present invention to define a configuration of a monolithically connected set of integrated modular multiple chamber vacuum processing systems (IMMCVPS) having the above advantages.
When in the process of deposition of material, such as aluminum-copper (Al:Cu) or titanium nitride (TiN) upon a wafer, it is necessary to prevent the deposition of the same on certain areas. These areas are well defined and contain marks necessary for subsequent manufacturing operations as well as to meet alignment needs of the present invention. Shadow masks and other devices must be precisely aligned with the object wafer during this deposition process. These devices are fixed within each of the required process chambers and therefore it is the wafer that must be properly aligned or oriented with these masks to afford the proper protection to the mark area. Generally, there is no major alignment or orientation operation within the process chamber due to process chamber design limitations, expense or complexity and therefore this must be accomplished once or repeatedly at a former step in the overall multiple chamber operation.
The required alignment operation may include a complex lateral X, Y translation movement as well as a &thgr; rotation of the wafer with respect to a datum. Although the present invention involves only an &thgr; axis orientation and utilizes an orientor, it is to be understood that the present invention can include the use of more complex alignment means.
Desirably, an alignment step which prealigns a wafer to a datum may be done once for all subsequent operations. However, the transfer means, such as the above R-&thgr; device, is limited in precision and accuracy and multiple transfers with such devices to and from the attending multiple processes incur a build up of alignment errors which are beyond the tolerance required within specific processes such as the alignment to the shadow masks. In the equipment of the present invention, the robotics transfer means is responsible for approximately +/−0.5 mm of error for each transfer and of course for three such transfers can cause as much as +/−1.5 mm alignment error of the wafer in a process chamber.
Therefore it is advantageous to define optimum locations and operation steps for alignment or orientation means within concatenated IMMCVPS configurations where alignment or orientation operations can be performed to minimize the alignment errors while minimizing the other factors adversely affecting the IMMCVPS.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4951601 (1990-08-01), Maydan et al.
patent: 5292393 (1994-03-01), Maydan et al.
patent: 5505779 (1996-04-01), Mizuno et al.
patent: 5516732 (1996-05-01), Flegal
patent: 5928389 (1999-07-01), Jevtic
patent: 6074443 (2000-06-01), Venkatesh et al.
Chung Chen-Fang
Jeng Shwangming
Ackerman Stephen B.
Markoff Alexander
Saile George O.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
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