Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Ebara Corporation

Other

Gisuke Kouno

Riichiro Aoki

Manabu Tsujimura

Atsushi Shigeta

Hiromi Yajima

Toyomi Nishi

Shoichi Kodama

Shiro Mishima

Yukio Imoto

Kazuaki Himukai

Tetsuji Togawa

Harumitsu Saito

Masako Watase

Tamami Takahashi

Koji Ono

Masako Kodera

Takanobu Nishimura

Toshiro Maekawa

Takuji Ashikari

Motoaki Okada

A polishing apparatus for polishing a surface of a workpiece includes a housing unit, a partition wall partitioning an interior of the housing unit into a first chamber and a second chamber, a polishing section disposed in the first chamber and having a turntable with an abrasive cloth mounted on an upper surface thereof and a top ring positioned above the turntable for supporting the workpiece to be polished and pressing the workpiece against the abrasive cloth, and a cleaning section disposed in the second chamber and cleaning the workpiece which has been polished. The polishing apparatus further includes a transferring device for transferring the workpiece which has been polished from the polishing section to the cleaning section through an opening and an exhaust system for exhausting ambient air from each of the polishing section and cleaning section separately and independently.

Polishing apparatus

Polishing apparatus and a method of polishing and cleaning and drying a wafer

Polishing apparatus and method

A semiconductor cleaning method includes scrubbing a semiconductor wafer using a cleaning member made primarily of polyurethane and having micropores in a surface contacting the semiconductor wafer. The micropores have an average diameter ranging from 10 to 200 .mu.m. The cleaning member may be made of either polyurethane foam or non-woven fabric composed of fibers bound together by urethane resin. By this scrubbing step, particles that are strongly attached to the surface of a substrate such as the semiconductor wafer can easily be removed. During cleaning of the substrate, surface irregularities and crystalline protrusions on the surface of a substrate such as a semiconductor wafer can be scraped off to adjust the surface roughness of the semiconductor wafer to a desired degree for making the semiconductor wafer surface flat.

Method for cleaning workpiece

A polishing apparatus includes a detachable light weight cloth cartridge which shows little deformation under uneven loading during a polishing operation. Either mechanical or non-mechanical fixation of the cloth cartridge to a turntable is achieved. Mechanical fixation involves attaching the cloth cartridge to the turntable at peripheral and center sections of the cloth cartridge. Non-mechanical fixation involves attaching the cloth cartridge to the turntable by a vacuum arrangement. The assembly of the cloth cartridge and the turntable not only produces excellent flatness on polished semiconductor wafers by maintaining a level polishing surface, but also improves the production yield by preventing breakage of wafers during the polishing process.

Polishing apparatus including cloth cartridge connected to turntable

Polishing aparatus and method

A wafer holding apparatus comprises a susceptor unit having wafer support grooves where wafers are detachably fixed, a plurality of chuck claws so provided as to be movable by air cylinders relative to a chuck body and adapted to hold the outer edge of the wafer, a transfer arm for transferring the chuck body to a predetermined position, and an automatic position correcting device for automatically correcting the positions of the chucks relative to the wafer support groove.

Wafer holding apparatus

Growing community of inventors

Oita, Japan

Gisuke Kouno