Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd.

Screen Holdings Co., Ltd.

Katsuhiko Miya

Akira Izumi

Yosuke Hanawa

Hiroaki Kitagawa

Yuta Sasaki

Naozumi Fujiwara

Hideki Adachi

Hiroyuki Yashiki

Itsuki Kajino

Eiji Fukatsu

Masahiko Kato

Takashi Kawamura

Koji Ando

Dai Ueda

Tomonori Kojimaru

Takuya Kishimoto

Kazuki Naoki

A substrate processing apparatus comprises: a first solidifier and a second solidifier. The first solidifier solidifies a liquid to be solidified adhering to a front surface of a substrate by supplying a liquid refrigerant to a back surface of the substrate at a first position. The second solidifier solidifies the liquid to be solidified by at least one of a first cooling mechanism and a second cooling mechanism. The first cooling mechanism cools the liquid to be solidified by supplying a gas refrigerant toward the substrate at a second position more distant from a center of rotation of the substrate in a radial direction than the first position. The second cooling mechanism cools the liquid to be solidified by bringing a processing surface into contact with the liquid to be solidified at the second position.

Substrate processing apparatus and substrate processing method

When a substrate on which a fine pattern is formed is dried with vapor, prevention of collapse of the pattern due to water originally contained in IPA to be stored has been a problem to be solved. A mixed liquid stored in a mixed liquid storage is vaporized to generate mixed vapor containing the IPA and water (water vapor). Then, a vapor dewatering unit connected to a vapor supply pipe through which the mixed vapor is fed removes water in the mixed vapor. This can reduce the concentration of water originally contained in the IPA to be stored before the IPA is supplied to the substrate, thereby suppressing collapse of the pattern.

Vapor supplying apparatus, vapor drying apparatus, vapor supplying method, and vapor drying method

A substrate processing apparatus comprises: a liquid film former which forms a liquid film by supplying a liquid on an upper surface of the substrate W held horizontally; a cooling gas discharge nozzle which discharges cooling gas of a temperature lower than a freezing point of the liquid forming the liquid film to the liquid film; a thawing liquid discharge nozzle which discharges a thawing liquid to a frozen film formed by freezing the liquid film; a thawing liquid supplier which supplies the heated thawing liquid to the thawing liquid discharge nozzle via a pipe; and a receiver which receives the cooling gas and the thawing liquid respectively discharged from the cooling gas discharge nozzle and the thawing liquid discharge nozzle at the respective retracted position and guides the cooling gas and the thawing liquid to a common flow passage.

After hydrophobization of surfaces of patterns, a liquid film of pure water or the like is formed on the surfaces of the substrate. At this stage, the liquid of the liquid film cannot be present between the patterns because of hydrophobization, and gas is present there. With the front surface of the substrate covered with the liquid film, a liquid to which ultrasonic waves are applied is supplied to the back surface of the substrate, whereby the back surface of the substrate is cleaned due to the cavitation collapse energy in the liquid caused by the ultrasonic waves. While collapse of cavitation occurs at the front surface of the substrate, the presence of the gas between the patterns prohibits collapse of cavitation between the patterns, the liquid film can prevent contamination while preventing collapse of the patterns, and the back surface of the substrate is cleaned favorably.

Substrate cleaning method and substrate cleaning apparatus

A solidified body forming step includes: a first step of landing a processing surface of a cooling member on a liquid film to solidify the liquid to be solidified located in an area sandwiched between an upper surface and the processing surface; and a second step of releasing the processing surface from the solidified area solidified in the first step. The processing surface has a lower temperature than a freezing point of the liquid to be solidified. Adhesion between the solidified area and the processing surface is smaller than that between the solidified area and the upper surface.

Substrate processing method and substrate processing apparatus

A rinsing liquid adheres to a substrate subjected to a cleaning process. The rinsing liquid on the substrate is first replaced with IPA liquid. While the substrate covered with the IPA liquid is held in a dryer chamber, liquid carbon dioxide is supplied to the surface of the substrate. Liquid nitrogen is supplied to cool down the interior of the dryer chamber. This solidifies the liquid carbon dioxide on the substrate into solid carbon dioxide. Thereafter, the pressure in the dryer chamber is returned to atmospheric pressure, and gaseous nitrogen is supplied into the dryer chamber. Thus, the temperature in the dryer chamber increases. The solid carbon dioxide on the surface of the substrate is sublimated, and is hence removed from the substrate. All of the steps are performed while carbon dioxide is not in a supercritical state but in a non-supercritical state.

Apparatus for and method of processing substrate

An ultrasonic wave applying liquid is supplied to one principal surface of a substrate while a liquid film of a first liquid being formed on another principal surface of the substrate. The ultrasonic wave applying liquid is obtained by applying ultrasonic waves to a second liquid. Ultrasonic vibration is transmitted to the other principal surface and the liquid film, thereby ultrasonically cleaning the other principal surface. The first liquid has a higher cavitation intensity, which is a stress per unit area acting on the substrate by cavitation caused in the liquid when ultrasonic waves are transmitted to the liquid present on the principal surface of the substrate, than the second liquid.

A rinsing liquid (DIW) is discharged from a rinsing liquid discharge port formed in a blocking member to perform rinsing processing to a substrate surface while a nitrogen gas is supplied into a clearance space, and a liquid mixture (IPA+DIW) is discharged from a liquid mixture discharge port formed in the blocking member to replace the rinsing liquid adhering to the substrate surface with the liquid mixture while the nitrogen gas is supplied into the clearance space. Thus, an increase of the dissolved oxygen concentration of the liquid mixture can be suppressed upon replacing the rinsing liquid adhering to the substrate surface with the liquid mixture, which makes it possible to securely prevent from forming an oxide film or generating watermarks on the substrate surface.

DIW in an excessively cooled state is supplied as a solidification liquid to a substrate W, and a solidified material of the DIW is formed by a landing impact on the substrate W. This makes the use of a gaseous refrigerant necessary to form a solidified material unnecessary, eliminates the need for a facility to generate the gaseous refrigerant, shortens a processing time and further enables running cost and the like to be suppressed.

A substrate processing apparatus comprising: a substrate holder which holds a substrate having a pattern formed in a surface of the substrate in a predetermined positional relationship with a reference indicator of the substrate; and a cleaner which abuts an adhesive member on the surface of the substrate which is held by the substrate holder and peels off the adhesive member along the surface of the substrate in a peeling direction which is not at right angle to a direction of the pattern, thereby cleaning the surface of the substrate.

A rinsing liquid adheres in a piled up state to the entire front surface of the substrate which is rinsed with the rinsing liquid discharged from a rinse nozzle, thereby forming a so-called puddle-like rinse layer. An opposed surface of a proximity block is positioned in the vicinity of a front surface of a substrate and a liquid-tight layer is formed in a gap space between the opposed surface and the front surface of the substrate. In a condition that the liquid-tight layer is formed, the proximity block moves in the moving direction, and a solvent gas containing a solvent component, which dissolves in the liquid to reduce a surface tension, is supplied toward an upstream-side edge of the liquid-tight layer.

Substrate processing method

A cooling gas discharge nozzleis arranged above an initial position P(Rin) distant from a rotation center P(0) of a substrate W toward the outer edge of the substrate W and supplies a cooling gas to the initial position P(0) of the rotating substrate W to solidify DIW adhering to an initial region including the initial position P(Rin) and the rotation center P(0). Following formation of an initial solidified region FR, a range to be solidified is spread toward the outer edge of the substrate W and all the DIW (liquid to be solidified) adhering to a substrate surface Wf is solidified to entirely freeze a liquid film LF.

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Kyoto, Japan

Katsuhiko Miya