Lam Research Corporation

Arulselvam Simon Jeyapalan

Richard M Blank

Peter S Thaulad

Marco Piccigallo

Mark E Emerson

Hossein Sadeghi

Eric Chan

Tyson Lee Ringold

Victor Eduardo Espinosa, Iii

Disclosed are techniques and systems for automatically determining and correcting the levelness of a wafer handling robot end effector. The systems may use a tilt sensor or a gravitational field sensor which may be calibrated to the wafer handling robot. The output from the tilt sensor may be used to determine or estimate the tilt of an end effector of the wafer handling robot and to perform correctional positioning to reduce or eliminate the tilt, to automatically teach certain positions that have reduced tilt, to perform health checks on the robot, provide feedback to a user, etc.

Wafer handling robot with gravitational field sensor

Systems and techniques for determining and using multiple types of offsets for providing wafers to a wafer support of a wafer station of a semiconductor processing tool are disclosed; such techniques and systems may use an autocalibration wafer that may include a plurality of sensors, including a plurality of edge-located imaging sensors that may be used to image fiducials associated with two different structures located in a selected wafer station.

Integrated adaptive positioning systems and routines for automated wafer-handling robot teach and health check

A test wafer having two spaced-apart accelerometers mounted thereon is disclosed. The accelerometers may be positioned at locations located along a common axis passing through the center of gravity of the test wafer. The test wafer may include a controller that may be used to transmit acceleration data collected by the accelerometers to another device. In some implementations, a semiconductor processing tool is provided that includes a test wafer receptacle for storing a test wafer that remains with the semiconductor processing tool and that may be retrieved by a wafer handling robot for performing a test cycle during periods when the wafer handling robot is not performing substrate transport operations.

Smart vibration wafer with optional integration with semiconductor processing tool

Growing community of inventors

Newark, CA, United States of America

Arulselvam Simon Jeyapalan