Tokyo Electron Limited

Fumito Kagami

Tadashi Obikane

Yasuhito Yamamoto

Kazuhiro Ozawa

Shuji Akiyama

Masaru Suzuki

Hiroki Hosaka

Kazumi Yamagata

Kazuya Yano

Hiroshi Amemiya

Shinji Kojima

Yuji Asakawa

Eiichi Matsuzawa

Shigeki Nakamura

Toshiaki Takahara

Techniques for testing both a rectangular substrate and a circular substrate are provided. One aspect of the present disclosure pertains to a test device comprising an exchangeable change kit, wherein the change kit comprises a first holding device and a second holding device which are exchangeably mounted in the test device, wherein the first holding device is configured to adsorb and hold a rectangular substrate, wherein the second holding device is configured to adsorb and hold a circular substrate, and wherein the first holding device and the second holding device are exchanged according to a substrate to be tested.

Test device, change kit, and method of exchanging change kit

A substrate holding mechanism includes: a mounting stage on which a substrate is mounted; a plurality of holding sections each of which includes an upper surface that holds a lower surface of a peripheral section of the substrate and includes a lower surface that pushes down an upper surface of the peripheral section of the substrate mounted on the mounting stage; a protrusion that is provided on the plurality of holding sections and that contacts an end surface of the substrate mounted on the mounting stage to correct a position of the substrate; a lifting and lowering mechanism configured to lift and lower the plurality of holding sections; and a horizontal moving mechanism configured to horizontally move the plurality of holding sections.

Substrate holding mechanism, substrate mounting method, and substrate detaching method

A method detects a center of a wafer having a notch when aligning the wafer mounted on a movable mounting table. The method includes capturing an image of the wafer by using an imaging unit, the image including the notch; extracting an edge line from the image of the wafer; detecting a shape of the notch from the edge line; and calculating the center of the wafer based on the shape of the notch.

Method for detecting the center of wafer and storage medium storing a program for executing the method

A probe apparatus includes an imaging unit imaging probes and a first and a second imaging unit imaging the wafer surface. The apparatus further includes a control unit obtaining positions of a mounting table at which focuses of the imaging unit and the first imaging unit are made to coincide with each other and then the focuses of the image unit and the second imaging unit are made to coincide with each other by moving the mounting table; obtaining positions of the mounting table at which the images of the wafer are sequentially taken by the first and the second imaging unit by moving the mounting table; obtaining a position of the mounting table at which the probes are imaged by the imaging unit, and calculating a position of the mounting table at which the wafer contacts with the probes based on the obtained positions of the mounting table.

Probe apparatus and probing method

A prove apparatus includes a first and a second loading port for mounting therein two carriers facing each other, a wafer transfer mechanism having a rotation center between the loading ports, and a first and a second inspection unit being symmetrical to each other and disposed in accordance with the arrangement of the loading ports. In this configuration, wafers are directly transferred between the carrier and a wafer chuck of the inspection unit by the wafer transfer mechanism. The wafer transfer mechanism has three arms for unloading two wafers from the carrier. The prove apparatus has a compact size and achieves a high throughput.

Each inspection units of a probe apparatus is provided with an imaging unit to take an image of a wafer

A method for re-registering at least one set of image information of an object to be aligned to align the object by an imaging unit, the image information including photographing conditions and position data of the object which have been previously registered by capturing an image of the object with the imaging unit. The method includes automatically moving at least one of the object and the imaging unit based on the position data of the image information and re-capture the image of the object with the imaging unit by using the previously registered photographing conditions of the image information and re-registering the image information by using the re-captured image of the object.

Method for re-registering an object to be aligned by re-capturing images using previously registered conditions and storage medium storing a program for executing the method

Growing community of inventors

Nirasaki, Japan

Fumito Kagami