Applied Materials, Inc.

Sanjay Rajaram

Boguslaw A Swedek

Manoocher Birang

David A Chan

Bret W Adams

Nir Merry

Dean C Hruzek

Sushant Suresh Koshti

Douglas Brian Baumgarten

Helder T Lee

John C Menk

Ayan Majumdar

Sangram Patil

Michelle Alejandra Wong

A system includes a substrate support on which to receive a transparent substrate, a non-contact sensor adapted to detect and image a dot pattern etched on a front surface of the transparent substrate, and a processing device attached to the non-contact sensor. The processing device may determine, using imaging data from the non-contact sensor, an orientation of a right-angled edge of the dot pattern. The processing device may determine, based on the orientation of the right-angled edge, whether a front surface of the transparent substrate is facing up or facing down. The processing device may also direct a robot to transfer the transparent substrate to a processing chamber dependent on whether the front surface of the transparent substrate is facing up or facing down.

Front surface and back surface orientation detection of transparent substrate

Electronic device processing systems including environmental control of the factory interface are described. One electronic device processing system has a factory interface having a factory interface chamber, a load lock apparatus coupled to the factory interface, one or more substrate carriers coupled to the factory interface, and an environmental control system coupled to the factory interface and operational to monitor or control one of: relative humidity, temperature, an amount of oxygen, or an amount of inert gas within the factory interface chamber. In another aspect, purge of a carrier purge chamber within the factory interface chamber is provided. Methods for processing substrates are described, as are numerous other aspects.

Substrate processing systems, apparatus, and methods with factory interface environmental controls

A factory interface for an electronic device processing system includes a factory interface chamber, an inert gas supply conduit, an exhaust conduit and an inert gas recirculation system. The inert gas supply conduit supplies an inert gas into the factory interface chamber. The exhaust conduit exhausts the inert gas from the factory interface chamber. The inert gas recirculation system recirculates the inert gas exhausted from the factory interface chamber back into the factory interface chamber.

A computer-implemented method for process control in chemical mechanical polishing in which an initial pre-polishing thickness of a substrate is measured at a metrology station, a parameter of an endpoint algorithm is determined from the initial thickness of the substrate, a substrates is polished at a polishing station, and polishing stops when an endpoint criterion is detected using the endpoint algorithm.

Computer-implemented process control in chemical mechanical polishing

Polishing system with in-line and in-situ metrology

Computer-implemented method for process control in chemical mechanical polishing

A computer program product for process control in chemical mechanical polishing is described. The product includes instructions to cause a processor to receive a measurement of an initial pre-polishing thickness of a layer of a substrate from a metrology station, determine a value for a parameter of an endpoint algorithm from the initial thickness of the substrate, receive a monitoring signal generated from monitoring in-situ polishing of the substrate, process the monitoring signal to detect a signal feature indicating a final or intermediate endpoint and send instructions to stop polishing when an endpoint criterion is detected using the endpoint algorithm with the determined value for the parameter.

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Sanjay Rajaram