Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd.

Kabushiki Kaisha Kobe Seiko Sho

Other

Kobe Steel, Ltd.

Ryuji Kitakado

Kimitsugu Saito

Yusuke Muraoka

Ikuo Mizobata

Yoshihiko Sakashita

Tetsuo Hoki

Katsumi Watanabe

Hisanori Oshiba

Hironobu Yano

Yoichi Inoue

Masahiro Yamagata

Hiroaki Kakuma

Tomomi Iwata

Shogo Sarumaru

Takashi Miyake

Takao Kanai

Masami Ohtani

Hiroyuki Onishi

Minobu Matsunaga

Tetsuo Sano

Kaoru Aoki

Hisayuki Tsujinaka

Tutomu Ueyama

Takahiko Ishii

Nobuyuki Kawakami

Takao Omae

Yoshinori Sezaki

Masao Tsuji

Tomiji Hotta

Eiji Kodama

Akira Matsumura

A high-pressure processing apparatus includes a processing vessel including a processing chamber formed therein to perform a certain process onto an object in the processing chamber; fluid feeding means which feeds a high-pressure fluid into the processing chamber; fluid discharging means which discharges the high-pressure fluid from the processing chamber; an agitating unit which is arranged in the processing chamber and is operative to flow the high-pressure fluid over the object by relative rotation to the processing vessel; a communicating channel which is formed in the processing vessel to communicate inside and outside of the processing chamber; a rotary driving member which is coupled to the agitating unit via a shaft portion provided in the communicating channel; and a sealing portion which is provided between the shaft portion and the processing vessel to disconnect the processing chamber from the rotary driving member. The fluid discharging means includes a fluid discharging port formed in a certain position of the communicating channel closer to the processing chamber than the sealing portion to discharge the high-pressure fluid.

High pressure processing method

When the hatch of a substrate washing chamberis opened to receive a substrate, certain valves are closed, and a valve is opened, supply COto purge the substrate washing chamberto and exclude air. When the hatch is closed, another valve is opened to vent substrate washing chamberso that the COexpels any gas and unwanted air from the substrate washing chamberand the conduits. Thereafter, super critical COis used to wash the substrate and clean the circulation line. The flow of supercritical COis sent to the substrate washing chamber. After flowing through the circulation line, including a circulation channel, it passes through a bypass channelto a decompressor. Any chemicals or organic substances left in the circulation line are continuously sent to a separation/recover bathtogether with the flow.

High pressure processing apparatus and method

When the hatch of a substrate washing chamberis opened to receive a substrate, certain valves are closed, and one valve is opened, to supply COto purge the substrate washing chamberto and exclude air. When the hatch is closed, another valve is opened to vent substrate washing chamberso that the COexpels any gas and unwanted air from the substrate washing chamberand the conduits. Thereafter, supercritical COis used to wash the substrate and clean the circulation line. The flow of supercritical COis sent to the substrate washing chamber. After flowing through the circulation line, including a circulation channel, it passes through a bypass channelto a decompressor. Any chemicals or organic substances left in the circulation line are continuously sent to separation/recovery bathtogether with the flow.

High pressure processing apparatus and high pressure processing method

A high-pressure processing apparatus for removing unnecessary matters on objects to be processed by bringing a high-pressure fluid and a chemical liquid other than the high-pressure fluid into contact with the objects to be processed in a pressurized state is provided with a plurality of high-pressure processing chambers, a common high-pressure fluid supply unit for supplying the high-pressure fluid to each one of the high-pressure processing chambers, a common chemical liquid supply unit for supplying the chemical liquid to the each high-pressure processing chambers, and a separating unit for separating gaseous components from a mixture of the high-pressure fluid and the chemical liquid discharged from the high-pressure processing chambers after the objects are processed. Thus, a high-pressure processing apparatus which has such a compact construction as to be partly installable in a clean room and can stably perform a high-pressure processing can be provided.

High pressure processing apparatus

With respect to any one of processing units, a main transportation path, a developing unit, a dedicated transportation robot and a high-pressure processing unit are disposed linearly in this order in a direction. Hence, even if a processing fluid adhering to a substrate or an evaporant of the processing fluid moves toward the main transportation path while the high-pressure processing unit transports the substrate wet with the processing fluid, there are the processing units located which the processing fluid or its evaporant must arrive at before reaching the main transportation path.

Substrate processing apparatus equipping with high-pressure processing unit

A method and system for processing a substrate includes performing a wet process by supplying a working liquid to a substrate in a wet processing apparatus, transferring the substrate in a non-dry state from the wet processing apparatus to a drying apparatus, and subjecting the substrate to a supercritical drying by a supercritical fluid in the drying apparatus.

Method and system for processing substrate

Liquid for prevention of substrate drying is supplied into a processing chamber so that a pool of the liquid is created as an anti-drying atmosphere in advance inside a processing chamber, and substrates, as they are dipped in the pool, are kept on stand-by in a substrate board. In this manner, air drying of the substrates which are kept on stand-by is prevented. When the number of the substrates in the substrate board reaches a certain number, the anti-drying atmosphere is removed from the processing chamber, which is followed by introduction of an SCF into the processing chamber and supercritical drying (high pressure drying) of all of the plurality of substrates inside the processing chamber, namely, batch supercritical drying.

High-pressure drying apparatus, high-pressure drying method and substrate processing apparatus

An atmospheric conditioning unit for supplying temperature- and humidity-controlled air to a chemical processing part (spin coater) is arranged immediately above a chemical processing part, between this chemical processing part and a heat treatment part (including a hot plate and a cool plate). Namely, the chemical processing part, the atmospheric conditioning unit and the heat treatment part are vertically arranged in a stacked manner. The atmospheric conditioning unit receives external air from an opening. A closed partition is provided to block air flow between the atmospheric conditioning unit and a transport area. The temperature- and humidity-controlled air supplied from the atmospheric conditioning unit to the spin coater forms a downflow in the spin coater, and thereafter rises through an opening and joins with the air flowing from the opening, to be introduced into the atmospheric conditioning unit again and reused.

Apparatus for processing a substrate providing an efficient arrangement

A substrate processing apparatus comprises a first substrate transfer unit having a first transfer path and a second substrate transfer unit having a second transfer path. A spin coating unit and a spin developing unit are arranged along the first transfer path, and a substrate cassette is arranged along the second transfer path. A substrate transport robot of the second substrate transfer unit selectively introduces a substrate received from a substrate transport robot of the first substrate transfer unit in one of external exposure apparatuses arranged on both end portions of the second transfer path, and discharges the substrate from the exposure apparatus for transfering the same to the substrate transport robot of the first substrate transfer unit. Thereby the substrate processing apparatus can avoid or relieve reduction of operational efficiency even if its throughput is different from that of an exposure apparatus.

Substrate processing apparatus

A printed pattern is provided with a wiring pattern having a land and a through hole surrounded by the land. The wiring pattern and the through hole are read by a photoelectric image sensor to obtain a pattern image and a hole image, respectively. A pattern gauge image is defined by the pattern image, and a hole gauge image having a ring-like shape is obtained from the hole image. A logical product between the inversion image of the pattern gauge image and the hole gauge signal provides a protrusion region image. Since the hole gauge image has an isotropic contour, the minimum annular width of the land is detected, independent of the direction in which the through hole is deviated from the land.

Method of and apparatus for inspecting the minimum annular width of a

A method and apparatus for detecting neck disconnection between a land and a line in a wiring pattern on a printed board includes a scanner for obtaining images of the wiring pattern and a through hole formed in the pattern. The image of the wiring pattern is converted to a line image representing a wiring line by thinning the pattern image. A window encompassing the image of the through hole is defined, and part of the thinned pattern image overlapping the window is extracted. The number of end points of the thinned pattern image is counted in the window. If the number of the end points is an odd number larger than one, it is determined that neck disconnection is present in the wiring pattern.

Method and apparatus for detecting neck disconnection between land and

A frequency distribution or histogram M (L.sub.j-1, L.sub.j) of differences between gradation levels (L.sub.j-1, L.sub.j) of adjacent pixels (P.sub.j-1, P.sub.j) in an image is obtained, and the number of level-changes for each tentative threshold level L.sub.j is determined as a function of the histogram of the level differencies. By using the number of level-changes, an optimum binarization threshold level is set by means of an adaptive thresholding method. Since the number of level-changes is calculated from the histogram of the level-differencies without practical binarization for each threshold level, the amount of calculations is not dependent on the number of pixels but on the number of gradation levels. The calculations for setting the threshold level for the binarization of the image are achieved at high speeds by a small-scale hardware.

Method of and apparatus for obtaining binary image

Respective images of a conductive pattern and through holes of a printed circuit board are obtained. The through holes are classified into normal through holes having a relatively large diameter and mini via holes having a comparatively small diameter. The mini via hole image is enlarged to become an enlarged mini via hole image (SHSm). The image of the conductive pattern has hole parts therein, which are filled with images generated from the normal through hole image and the mini via hole image to obtain a corrected pattern image (CPS). The edge of the corrected pattern image is detected and enlarged to obtain an enlarged edge image (SES). The enlarged edge image is classified into two areas, one of which overlaps with the enlarged mini via hole image (SHSm). These two areas are subjected to inspection in different inspection modes.

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Kyoto, Japan

Ryuji Kitakado