International Business Machines Corporation

Keith W Meranda

Howard L Kelly

David L Lutz

Russell B Minter

David E Baker

A reusable evaporation fixture for aligning a plurality of small individual substrates to a single contact mask is described. The fixture preferably includes a series of thin inner plates held together by a base plate and top plate. One of the inner plates includes a plurality of spring means corresponding to the plurality of individual substrates to be masked. Each spring means forces individual substrate against the contact mask to prevent haloing of the deposition pattern. Another of the inner plates has a plurality of pockets and spring means within those pockets which force the individual substrates against the alignment faces of the pockets, to align and secure the individual substrates in the X-Y plane. Once the individual substrates have been placed in the pockets provided by the inner plates, the contact mask is placed over the inner plates, and a top plate is placed over the entire assembly. The top plate shields the parts of the reusable evaporation fixture during deposition, so that only the top plate and the mask must be cleaned. The use of spring means in the inner plates compensates for dimensional tolerance between the individual substrates.

Reusable evaporation fixture

A radial reform head for reforming the shape of the perimeter pins of a semiconductor module is provided. The radial reform head has a plate having edges defining an aperture, wherein the dimensions of the edges are such that the desired length of a row of reformed pins is equal to the length of the edges. A module handler for inserting the pins of a module into a stationary insert in the aperture is also provided. Side reform jaws, preferably four, for reforming the perimeter rows of pins except for the corner pins, and corner reform jaws, preferably four, for reforming the corner pins are situated so that they can be moved radially to and from the pins by pneumatic cylinders. The reform jaws have extended portions which contact the pins when the cylinders are actuated by a signal from the module handler, and force the pins against the edges which define the aperture of the plate thus reforming the pins to a particular dimension. The cylinders and jaws have common center lines and all jaws and cylinders simultaneously move radially from the reform head center when the cylinders are actuated.

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Manassas, VA, United States of America

Keith W Meranda