Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp. Ltd.

Kuen-Ei Chen

Shan-Ching Lin

Feng-Cheng Kuo

Chia-Hung Chung

Yu-Yi Wu

Hung-Shan Lan

A capacitive sensor assembly for a robot to prevent damage to the robot when it moves in an undesired manner is disclosed. The robot may be used in conjunction with semiconductor fabrication applications. The capacitive sensor assembly can include a hit contact, one or more fixed contacts, one or more damping springs, and a capacitive sensor. The hit contact comes into contact with a barrier as a result of undesired movement by the robot. The damping springs are compressed against the fixed contacts when the hit contact comes into contact with the barrier. The capacitive sensor has a capacitance that changes as the hit contact comes into contact with the barrier. The capacitance of the capacitive sensor is used to detect the robot coming into contact with the barrier, so that damage to the robot can be prevented.

Prevention of robot damage via capacitive sensor assembly

An apparatus and method for detecting in chamber wafer position and process status are disclosed. A chamber includes a processing pedestal and plurality of lift pins. Each lift pin has an associated load cell for measuring the load exerted by the wafer on the lift pins. Mispositioned wafers or broken wafers will result in load measurements outside of expected ranges. Position of the wafer may be determined from the load distribution sensed on the lift pins.

Chamber wafer detection

A wafer cassette for storing and transporting wafers that is equipped with sensors such as piezoelectric sensors or capacitance sensors on the surface of the dividers for sensing the presence or absence of wafers positioned on top of the dividers is described. The sensors are capable of detecting any defective placement of wafers such as a cross-slot placement or a double placement such that the condition can be corrected by a machine operator and a wafer cassette can be stopped before it is loaded into an internal buffer of a process machine.

Growing community of inventors

Tainan, Taiwan

Kuen-Ei Chen