Novellus Systems Incorporated

Kevin Bertsch

John Derwood Herb

Edmund Minshall

Paul Franzen

Peter S Thaulad

John F Stumpf

Robert Marshall Stowell

Vishwas V Hardikar

Brian Severson

Timothy Patrick Cleary

Rich Blank

Wayne Tang

David T Marquardt

Rand Conner

Franklin D Root

James Jed Crawford

Jasent Montano

Migdad Selimovic

Ken Reynolds

An apparatus for simultaneously rinsing and drying front and back surfaces of a workpiece comprises a chuck adapted to spin the workpiece, a plurality of posts coupled to the chuck and adapted to support the workpiece, and first and second mechanical arms. The first mechanical arm is adapted to be positioned between the chuck and the workpiece, and to sweep along at least part of the workpiece back surface. The first mechanical arm comprises at least a first rinsing liquid nozzle, and a first tensioactive vapor nozzle. The second mechanical arm is adapted to be positioned adjacent to the workpiece front surface, and to sweep along at least part of the workpiece front surface. The second mechanical arm comprises at least a second rinsing liquid nozzle, and a second tensioactive vapor nozzle.

Apparatus and method for cleaning and removing liquids from front and back sides of a rotating workpiece

A work piece handling apparatus moves workpieces with a plurality of independently movable load cups that have combined multiple axes of motion. The apparatus can load and unload work pieces from a wet process station and move work pieces between wet process stations and maintain wet chemistry delivery to the workpiece without involving a robot. A method of work piece handling using the apparatus provides a significant throughput improvement by reducing the inherent time lag of pneumatic systems and eliminating multiple steps involving the robot during inter-station wafer transfer.

High throughput servo load cup with integrated wet chemistry delivery

Methods and apparatus are provided for the chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) of a surface of a work piece. In accordance with one embodiment of the invention the apparatus comprises a plurality of CMP systems, a plurality of load cups for loading unprocessed work pieces into and unloading processed work pieces from the plurality of CMP systems, a plurality of cleaning stations for cleaning processed work pieces unloaded from the CMP systems, and a single robot configured to transfer unprocessed work pieces to the plurality of load cups and to transfer processed work pieces from the load cups to the plurality of cleaning stations.

CMP apparatus and method

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Tigard, OR, United States of America

Kevin Bertsch