SEMICONDUCTOR WAFER TREATMENT EQUIPMENT

摘要

PURPOSE:To facilitate preventing foreign substances such as dust from penetrating from the atmosphere side into a process reaction chamber securely by a method wherein a wafer is carried in and out through a double preparation chamber composed of a 1st locking chamber and a 2nd locking chamber, which is maintained at a vacuum pressure like the 1st chamber and opened to the atmosphere only when the wafer is delivered from the outside, coupled in series. CONSTITUTION:A wafer 14 is delivered to an intermediate delivery mechanism 22. After a handling mechanism 24 is made to retreat, a vacuum partition valve 21 is closed and, further, a second locking chamber 16 is evacuated. When the chamber 16 is evacuated, the evacuation must be started slowly in order not to make dust penetrating from the atmosphere and accumulated scattered again. Then, when the pressure in the second locking chamber 16 is lowered to a predetermined vacuum pressure, a vacuum partition valve 20 between the second locking chamber 16 and a first locking chamber 15 is opened and the wafer 14 held by the intermediate delivery mechanism 22 is carried into the first locking chamber 15 by a handling mechanism 23. During this process, no pressure difference exists between the first locking chamber 15 and the second locking chamber 16 and floating dust in the second locking chamber 16 is eliminated by the evacuation so that the penetration of dust into the first locking chamber can be almost avoided.