Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd.

Kenji Hashinoki

Yasufumi Koyama

Kenji Kamei

Takaharu Yamada

Masayoshi Shiga

Masami Ohtani

Tetsuya Hamada

Joichi Nishimura

Satoshi Yamamoto

Toru Morimoto

Koji Hashimoto

Tsuyoshi Mitsuhashi

Kenji Sugimoto

Toru Kitamoto

Noriaki Yokono

Toshiaki Dainin

Tamihiro Bun

Kinya Murata

A substrate treating apparatus is capable of promptly heating substrates after exposure, and avoiding an adverse thermal influence on an exposing apparatus. A developing block includes heating modules for heating exposed substrates. An interface block is interposed between the heating modules and the exposing apparatus to isolate the exposing apparatus from the thermal influence of the heating modules. The interface block has a transport mechanism for transporting the substrates to the heating modules, whereby the exposed substrates are promptly transferred to the heating modules.

Substrate treating apparatus

A substrate processing apparatus for performing a resist coating process and a development process includes an inspection block for making an inspection on a substrate having undergone the development process. The inspection block has an inspection unit for making a predetermined inspection and a transport robot for transferring a substrate to and from the inspection unit. When a substrate to be inspected is transported to the inspection block, the transport robot transports the substrate to the inspection unit. When a substrate not to be inspected is transported to the inspection block, the transport robot transports the substrate directly to the outlet of the inspection block. At this time, a substrate not to be inspected is allowed to pass a preceding substrate to be inspected, at the inspection block. Thus provided is a substrate processing apparatus capable of improving the transport efficiency, to thereby achieve a higher throughput.

Substrate processing apparatus for performing photolithography

A cell controller controls the operation of a transport robot to keep a substrate belonging to a succeeding lot carried into a heating part in the fourth transport cycle from being transported out of the heating part in the next or fifth transport cycle, thereby preventing interference between the transport of substrates belonging to the succeeding lot and the transport of substrates belonging to a preceding lot. If interference is likely to occur between the transport of the substrates belonging to the succeeding lot and the transport of the substrates belonging to the preceding lot, the cell controller causes the substrates belonging to the succeeding lot not to be transported but to remain in processing units. This allows the transport of the substrates belonging to the succeeding lot in consideration of only the next transport cycle.

Substrate processing apparatus

A substrate processing apparatus includes a plurality of cells each including a predetermined processing unit, a transport mechanism, and a cell controller. The cell controller independently controls operations in each cell in accordance with transport setting and processing condition setting for each cell described in recipe data determined for each substrate unit to be processed. Because the processing and transport are performed independently of the operations of adjacent cells, substrates belonging to different substrate units are received through a feed inlet or the sane substrate inlet, are processed while being present in the same cell, and are transported to a feed outlet and a return outlet which are different substrate outlets. This allows the presence of different process flows in parallel.

Substrate processing apparatus and method of transporting substrates and method of processing substrates in substrate processing apparatus

When the processing temperature in a heater should be changed between lots, for example, a foremost substrate in a subsequent lot is transported to a position close to the heater such as a substrate holding part, and is held in standby thereat until adjustment of a processing environment (namely, change of the processing temperature) is completed. The substrate held in standby is thereafter transported to the heater. As compared with the case in which substrates are placed in standby in an indexer, substrates can be fed faster to the heater after change of the processing temperature, thereby suppressing throughput reduction.

Substrate processing apparatus and substrate processing method

During a series of processes performed on a substrate in a substrate processing apparatus, processing history data containing items such as transport time, processing time, plate temperature, revolution per minute of spin motors and flow rate of solutions is obtained for each substrate. When a substrate with a process defect is detected in an inspection block, the processing history data on that substrate is compared with reference data. A processing unit or transport robot in which processing history data falls outside a predetermined range set as the reference data is judged as abnormal, whereby a defective processing unit or defective transport robot is identified. Thus provided is a substrate processing apparatus capable of identifying a defective processing unit or defective transport robot quickly and accurately.

Substrate processing apparatus for inspecting processing history data

A substrate processing apparatus includes a plurality of cells each including a predetermined processing unit, a transport mechanism, and a cell controller. The cell controller independently controls operations in each cell in accordance with transport setting and processing condition setting for each cell described in recipe data determined for each substrate unit to be processed. Because the processing and transport are performed independently of the operations of adjacent cells, substrates belonging to different substrate units are received through a feed inlet or the same substrate inlet, are processed while being present in the same cell, and are transported to a feed outlet and a return outlet which are different substrate outlets. This allows the presence of different process flows in parallel.

Method of transporting and processing substrates in substrate processing apparatus

A controller is connected to a substrate processing apparatus and an exposure apparatus. A pilot substrate subjected to a series of processing as preprocessing is transported to an inspection unit. An inspection result determination part compares inspection results received from the inspection unit with substrate condition data so that a condition change instruction part changes the processing condition of each processing unit when no requirement is satisfied. This operation is so repeated that a processing control part executes actual processing according to recipe data when the inspection results satisfy the requirement. Thus, the efficiency a step of changing the processing condition of each processing part in response to the inspection results in the inspection part is improved in preprocessing executed in the substrate processing apparatus.

Substrate processing apparatus control system and substrate processing apparatus

A substrate treating apparatus has an antireflection film forming block, a resist film forming block and a developing block arranged in juxtaposition, each of these blocks including treating modules and a single main transport mechanism. The main transport mechanism transports substrates within each block, and transfers the substrates between the blocks through inlet substrate rests and outlet substrate rests provided as separate components. This construction realizes improved throughput of the substrate treating apparatus.

Substrate processing parts are stacked and arranged in a multistage manner around a transport robot arranged at the center of a processing area. Rotary application units are arranged on a second layer through an indexer and the transport robot. Rotary developing units are stacked above the rotary application units respectively on a fourth layer located above the second layer. Multistage thermal processing units and an edge exposure unit are horizontally arranged in line above the indexer. In place of the processing units, inspection units performing a macro defect inspection and pattern line width measurement may be arranged in the upside region of the indexer space.

An inspection unit is provided in a substrate processing apparatus performing resist coating processing and development processing on a substrate. In the inspection unit, a film thickness measuring device, a line width measuring device, an overlay measuring device and a macro defect inspection device are successively stacked and arranged from below. The inspection unit is provided on an intermediate portion of a substrate transport path formed in the substrate processing apparatus. The substrate processed in the substrate processing apparatus is selectively introduced into each inspection part. Therefore, the apparatus can properly inspect the substrate at need while suppressing reduction of the throughput. Thus provided are a substrate processing apparatus and a substrate inspection method capable of properly inspecting a substrate while suppressing reduction of the throughput.

Substrate processing apparatus, substrate inspection method and substrate processing system

Transport robot circulates in a predetermined order among a plurality of substrate processing parts while holds substrates, thereby to perform circulating transportation of the substrates. Controller calculates a minimum wait cycle which corresponds to the number of circulating transportation during time from first circulating of a first substrate to first circulating of a second substrate under the condition that interference between the first and second substrates is prohibited. When the minimum wait cycle is shorter than a standard wait cycle which corresponds to the number of circulating transportation for processing of the first substrate, starting of the circulating transportation of the second substrate is delayed in the range of the minimum wait cycle to a standard wait cycle. Hence, the processing of the second substrate can be started without waiting for completion of the processing of the first substrate, resulting in that through put is improved.

Substrate processing apparatus and method

Substrates of a precedent lot are transported among first processing parts while being processed by the first processing parts. The circulating transportation for the precedent lot is interrupted after starting of the circulating transportation of the first substrate of the precedent lot before starting of the circulating transportation of the last substrate of the precedent lot. Thereafter, a substrate of a subsequent lot is transported among second processing parts while being processed by the second processing parts. Hence, processing of the substrates of the precedent and subsequent lots are concurrently processed, resulting in improving a through put.

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Kyoto, Japan

Kenji Hashinoki