Intevac, Inc.

Shah, Vinay

Bluck, Terry

Riposan, Alex

Latchford, Ian

Alexandru Riposan

Terry Bluck

Vinay K Shah

Ian Scot Latchford

Vladimir Kudriavtsev

A system for processing substrates in plasma chambers, such that all substrates transport and loading/unloading operations are performed in atmospheric environment, but processing is performed in vacuum environment. The substrates are transported throughout the system on carriers. The system's chambers are arranged linearly, such that carriers move from one chamber directly to the next. A conveyor, placed above or below the system's chambers, returns the carriers to the system's entry area after processing is completed. Loading and unloading of substrates may be performed at one side of the system, or loading can be done at the entry side and unloading at the exit side.

System architecture for vacuum processing

A sputtering system having a processing chamber with an inlet port and an outlet port, and a sputtering target positioned on a wall of the processing chamber. A movable magnet arrangement is positioned behind the sputtering target and reciprocally slides behind the target. A conveyor continuously transports substrates at a constant speed past the sputtering target, such that at any given time, several substrates face the target between the leading edge and the trailing edge. In certain embodiments, the movable magnet arrangement slides at a speed that is at least several times faster than the constant speed of the conveyor. A rotating zone is defined behind the leading edge and trailing edge of the target, wherein the magnet arrangement decelerates when it enters the rotating zone and accelerates as it reverses direction of sliding within the rotating zone. In certain embodiments, magnet power and/or speed varies as function of direction of magnet travel.

Sputtering system and method using direction-dependent scan speed or power

A system for processing substrates in plasma chambers, such that all substrates transport and loading/unloading operations are performed in atmospheric environment, but processing is performed in vacuum environment. The substrates are transported throughout the system on carriers. The system's chambers are arranged linearly, such that carriers move from one chamber directly to the next. A conveyor, placed above or below the system's chambers, returns the carriers to the system's entry area after processing is completed. The carriers are configured for supporting substrates of different sizes. The carriers are also configured for flipping the substrates such that both surfaces of the substrates may be processed.

System and method for bi-facial processing of substrates

Growing community of inventors

Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Alexandru Riposan