Photography – Fluid-treating apparatus – Fluid application to one side only of photographic medium
Reexamination Certificate
2000-09-01
2001-12-25
Mathews, Alan A. (Department: 2851)
Photography
Fluid-treating apparatus
Fluid application to one side only of photographic medium
C396S327000, C118S069000, C118S052000, C134S902000, C355S030000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06332724
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a substrate processing apparatus for performing coating and developing processing for substrates such as semiconductor wafers or the like to fabricate semiconductors, and in more detail, relates to a substrate processing apparatus capable of controlling the temperature and humidity of air to be supplied to a resist coating processing unit and a developing processing unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the process of fabricating a semiconductor device, there is a series of processing steps of coating a semiconductor wafer which is a substrate to be processed with a photo-resist solution, reducing a circuit pattern or the like in size and exposing a photo-resist film by means of photolithography, and performing developing processing. These processing steps are extremely important to high integration of the semiconductor device.
In these processing steps, the semiconductor wafer which has undergone cleaning processing is first subjected to hydrophobic processing in an adhesion processing unit and cooled in a cooling processing unit, and thereafter a photo-resist film is formed by coating in a resist coating processing unit. The semiconductor wafer on which the photo-resist film is formed is subjected to pre-bake processing in a hot plate unit, cooled in a cooling processing unit, and then exposed in accordance with a predetermined pattern in an aligner. Subsequently, the exposed semiconductor wafer is subjected to post-exposure bake processing and cooled in a cooling processing unit, and a developing solution is applied and the exposed pattern is developed in a developing unit. Finally, the semiconductor wafer is subjected to post-bake processing in the hot plate unit.
Out of such a series of processing steps, the steps except exposure processing are performed by a resist coating and developing processing system into which these processing units are integrated.
In the aforesaid resist coating processing unit, the influence of temperature and humidity upon the precision of film thickness of a resist film formed after a resist solution is applied is large, and hence it is necessary to precisely control the temperature and humidity of air inside a cup in this coating processing unit.
In the developing processing unit, line width accuracy is greatly influenced by the temperature of a developing solution, and therefore it is required to precisely control the temperature of air inside a cup in the developing unit.
From these respects, conventionally, air of which the temperature and humidity are strictly controlled at predetermined values is supplied into the cups in the coating processing unit and the developing processing unit, and the control of temperature and humidity is performed integrally.
In a temperature and humidity controller used on this occasion, outside air (for example, a temperature of 23° C., a relative humidity of 45%) outside the resist coating and developing processing system is taken into a cooler and cooled to a temperature (for example, 7° C., 95% to 100%) not more than a dew-point temperature, then warmed to a predetermined temperature (for example, 23° C.) by a warmer, and thereafter humidified by a humidifier and regulated at predetermined temperature and humidity (for example, 23° C., 40% to 50%). The air regulated as above is then supplied to a coating processing unit (COT) and a developing processing unit (DEV) respectively.
The reason why after temporarily being cooled in the cooler, outside air is warmed by the warmer and humidified by the humidifier, and thereby the temperature and humidity thereof are regulated is that the regulation of the temperature and humidity of air to be supplied to the coating processing unit (COT) is required.
Namely, the relative humidity of air reaches almost 100% by temporarily cooling outside air to a temperature not more than the dew-point temperature by the cooler, but moisture contained in the air is removed (dehumidified) by condensing it into dewdrops, thereby reducing the absolute amount of moisture contained in unit volume of air, and thereafter the air is warmed to a predetermined temperature by the warmer and humidified to a predetermined humidity by the humidifier.
Accordingly, there is a problem that all the air taken in needs to be heated after being cooled temporarily, which causes a sudden rise in running cost for electric power consumption and the like.
Another problem is that there is the possibility that the temperature of air changes while the air reaches the coating processing unit even if the temperature and humidity are controlled as described above. Furthermore, equipment including such cooler, warmer, and humidifier as described above is necessary to control the temperature and humidity of air to be supplied to the coating processing unit, but there is a problem that such equipment needs to be simplified to the utmost to thereby hold down running costs for electric power consumption and the like.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is made to solve these problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a substrate processing apparatus capable of reducing running coats for electric power consumption by a device for regulating the temperature and humidity of air to be supplied to a coating processing unit and a developing processing unit.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a substrate processing apparatus capable of supplying air of which the temperature and humidity are controlled precisely to a processing unit.
To attain these objects, according to a first aspect of the present invention, a substrate processing apparatus, comprising: a coating processing unit for applying a resist solution to a substrate; a developing processing unit for performing developing processing for the substrate after the applied resist film is exposed; a cooling section for cooling outside air taken in from the outside to a predetermined temperature; a heat exchanger having a low temperature side flow path for letting the air cooled in the cooling section flow and a high temperature side flow path for letting outside air flow, and allowing heat exchange to be performed between the cooled air and the outside air; a warming and humidifying section for warming and humidifying the air flowing through the low temperature side flow path in the heat exchanger and warmed by the outside air flowing through the high temperature side flow path, and supplying the air with predetermined temperature and humidity to the coating processing unit; and a warming section for warming the outside air flowing through the high temperature side flow path in said heat exchanger and cooled by the air flowing through the low temperature side flow path, and supplying the air with a predetermined temperature to the developing processing unit, is provided.
According to the aforesaid structure, air, which is temporarily cooled by the cooling section and then warmed up by the heat exchanger, and thereafter the temperature and humidity of which are regulated by the warming and humidifying section, is supplied to the coating processing unit which requires temperature and humidity regulation of air to be supplied. Meanwhile, without being cooled by the cooling section, air, the temperature of which is slightly lowered by the heat exchanger and thereafter regulated by the warming section, is supplied to the developing processing unit which needs only temperature regulation of air and does not need humidity regulation. Therefore, the cooling section cools only the air to be supplied to the coating processing unit and does not the cool air to be supplied to the developing processing unit, whereby the amount of air to be cooled can be made smaller than in the prior arts. For example, when the numbers of the coating processing units and the developing processing units are the same, the amount of air to be cooled can be halved compared with that in the prior arts. As described above, by paying attention to the point that the dev
Akimoto Masami
Kanagawa Kouzou
Ohi Kazuhiko
Semba Norio
Ueda Issei
Mathews Alan A.
Rader & Fishman & Grauer, PLLC
Tokyo Electron Limited
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