VORRICHTUNG UND VERFAHREN ZUR STEUERUNG VON SPUTTERVORGÄNGEN MIT HOHER GESCHWINDIGKEIT

摘要

A control system for a film deposition apparatus having a plurality of processing chambers. The control system includes a plurality of control processors, each of the plurality of processors including a memory, being coupled to a subset of the plurality of chambers and controlling processing in said subset of the plurality of chambers. Each processor includes a data structure, provided in said memory, having configuration data for said plurality of processing chambers, and control routines for controlling processing in the apparatus. In a second aspect, the system includes a facility for determining the position of the substrate in the system. The transport system of the deposition apparatus includes hardware position sensors which indicate the presence or absence of a substrate at said sensor. The facility determines the position of substrates when the output of one or more of the hardware sensors is unavailable. The facility determines substrate position based on the output of one or more other sensors which provide a known position of the substrate, encoder data, and the rate of movement of the substrate at each transport stage of the system.