Pneumatically actuated flexure gripper for wafer handling robots

摘要

The disclosure relates to a robot (10) that can transfer workpieces, such as silicon wafers, at increased speeds and accelerations and decelerations. The robot has a robot wrist (50) associated with the robot arm (42) for mechanically clamping a workpiece (302) to a workpiece handling member (60) attached to the arm. The wafer clamp selectively applies sufficient force to hold the workpiece and prevent slippage and damage to the workpiece during rapid rotation and linear movement of the handling member. In a particular embodiment, a clamp for securing silicon wafers uses a flexure assembly (93) to position and hold the wafer with minimal particle generation and wafer damage. The clamp is designed so that the wafers are normally clamped near full extension of the workpiece handling member to deliver or pick up a wafer. A particular embodiment uses a pneumatic cylinder to actuate the flexure assembly so that the flexure assembly moves outwardly and rearwardly away from the wafer when actuated at or near full extension of the workpiece handling member. <IMAGE>