| 摘要 |
<p>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a wafer transport mechanism which can maintain the positional accuracy of a fork at a high level and, at the same time, does not give vibrations to the fork and the mechanism section of which can be reduced in size. SOLUTION: A wafer transport mechanism has a vacuum chamber 1 having a slide bearing 2 on its bottom, an elevating/lowering shaft 4 carrying a plate section 5 having a plurality of pinholes on its upper end section protruded into the chamber 1, and movable wafer support pins 11 attached to the bottom of the chamber 1. Each pin 11 is constituted of a base 12 attached to the bottom of the chamber 1; a pin support body 13 attached to the top of the base 12; a pin 18 which is made of a heat-resistant material and constituted of a small- diameter section 19, an intermediate-diameter section 20, and a large-diameter section 21; and an elastic body 22 interposed between the base 12 and pin 18. Therefore, a space for extracting a fork 9 can be formed easily between the fork 9 and a wafer 10 by moving the shaft 4 in the vertical direction.</p> |
