Shin-etsu Handotai Co., Ltd.

Fujikoshi Machinery Corp.

Shin-etsu Handotai, Ltd.

Kohichi Tanaka

Hiromasa Hashimoto

Fumio Suzuki

Shigeki Shudo

Noboru Shimamoto

Yasuo Inada

Makoto Nakajima

Akira Matsuda

Makoto Tsukada

A polishing machine for polishing a flat workpiece such as a semiconductor wafer has a rotatable reference table supporting an abrasive cloth disposed on a surface thereof, and a rotatable workpiece holder for holding a flat workpiece against the abrasive cloth. While the flat workpiece is being polished by the abrasive cloth, an abrasive compound is supplied between the abrasive cloth and the flat workpiece. The reference table has grooves defined therein for dissipating heat from the reference table and the abrasive cloth while the flat workpiece is being polished by the abrasive cloth. The grooves may be supplied with either the abrasive compound or a coolant.

Polishing machine and method of dissipating heat therefrom

A grinding method and apparatus having a position aligning mechanism to correctly achieve the centering of each work on a work table and locate an orientation flat part of each work at a predetermined position, and a displacing mechanism for reciprocally slidably displacing a top ring and the work table in order to assure that the center of each work is positionally aligned with the center of each top ring at an original position after completion of the centering of each work on the work table and the locating of the orientation flat part, and subsequently, centering each top ring with the gravitational center of each work so as to cancel a positional offset state prior to holding the work with the top ring to thrust the work against the grinding or polishing surface. The invention also includes a polishing method and apparatus in which both of a top ring and a rotary disc are reciprocally slidably displaced to improve the polishing efficiency of the device.

Polishing apparatus

A method of chucking semiconductor wafers, in which a silicone elastic layer with high flatness is formed on the surface of a hard substrate having fine through-holes for vacuum chucking. Next fine through-holes in the silicone elastic layer, are provided, each through-hole communicating with the fine through-holes of the hard substrate. Next a semi-conductor wafer is held on the hard substrate by vacuum chucking from the back side of the substrate, so as to hold the semiconductor wafer securely on the substrate only by surface adhesion of the silicone elastic layer during polishing of the wafer. This method does not require wax or similar adhesive for holding the semiconductor wafer on the hard surface during the polishing process, and can realize a high-precision and high-quality surface polishing process for the semiconductor wafers.

Method of chucking semiconductor wafers

A semiconductor wafer handling apparatus and method for transferring a wafer, one of whose faces has been already polished, from a wafer holder, which holds the wafer with the wafer's polished face facing downward, to a wafer cassette submerged in water contained in a water tank; the apparatus includes a wafer receive assembly and a water tank and the wafer receive assembly has a flat surface and is adapted to swing between an up-facing position at which the flat surface faces upward and a down-facing position at which the flat surface faces downward, and the wafer receive assembly is provided with ejection nozzles which eject water with a force sufficient to keep the wafer floating, and the water tank contains a wafer cassette to receive the wafer, and is capable of forcing the wafer which is left to sink in the water to enter the wafer cassette; whereas the method comprises: dropping the wafer from the wafer holder with the polished face facing downward onto a thin water layer formed over the wafer receive assembly; swinging the wafer receive assembly together with the wafer through an angle of about 180.degree. so that the wafer is turned upside down and brought in the water tank, whereupon the wafer sinks through the water with the polished face facing upward; and forcing the wafer to enter the wafer cassette.

Method and an apparatus for handling wafers

Growing community of inventors

Fukushima, Japan

Kohichi Tanaka