Applied Materials, Inc.

Atsushi Kitani

James Hoffman

Chia-Hung Chen

Young Kwon

Hong Soon Kim

Jaeyoung Kim

Hsin-Hsien Wu

The present disclosure generally relates to methods and apparatus for heating a substrate as well as a slot management method for a thermal treatment chamber that in one embodiment includes providing a first substrate to a first slot of a carrier in the thermal treatment chamber via a transfer opening formed in the thermal treatment chamber, the first substrate having a specified anneal time, heating the substrate, moving the carrier to a lowermost position in the thermal treatment chamber using an elevator mechanism coupled to the carrier, and moving the carrier such that the first slot is in a position adjacent to the transfer opening using the elevator mechanism within a carrier transfer time period and transferring the first substrate out of the thermal treatment chamber at a determined time period for anneal.

Method and apparatus for substrate transfer in a thermal treatment chamber

Implementations described herein generally relate to a method and apparatus for processing substrates in a processing system. The method includes identifying, in a buffer chamber coupled to a transfer chamber of a processing system, a first substrate that has been in the buffer chamber longer than a predetermined duration and identifying a first destination chamber of the processing system for the first substrate. After identifying the first substrate, a buffer chamber time-out operation is performed. The buffer time out operation includes suspending movement of substrates from a load lock chamber to the transfer chamber and removing the first substrate from the buffer chamber.

Method and apparatus for handling substrates in a processing system having a buffer chamber

Systems, methods, and apparatus are provided for operating a cluster tool including receiving recipe time data; receiving transfer time data; receiving process programs and associated substrate lots wherein the process programs include a plurality of sequences; determining cluster tool chambers associated with sequences that are bottleneck sequences; setting equipment constant values for components of the cluster tool to implement transfer priorities wherein the chambers associated with bottleneck sequences are given highest priority; executing a next sequence based on the transfer priorities; and repeating the determining, setting and executing for each remaining sequence. Numerous additional aspects are disclosed.

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Nara, Japan

Atsushi Kitani