Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Ebara Corporation

Takashi Omichi

Tetsuji Togawa

Hiromi Yajima

Toyomi Nishi

Shoichi Kodama

Riichiro Aoki

Yukio Imoto

A polishing apparatus includes an arrangement of a plurality of units to deal with various operations and a robot having at least one arm. The plurality of units are disposed around the robot and include a loading unit for receiving thereon a, e.g. dry, workpiece to be polished, a polishing system including at least one polishing unit for polishing the workpiece, a washing system and a drying system at least including one washing unit for washing and drying the polished workpiece, and an unloading unit for receiving thereon a resultant clean and dry polished workpiece.

Method and apparatus for dry-in, dry-out polishing and washing of a semiconductor device

A polishing facility integrates separate components of polishing such as wafer transport, polishing, cleaning and drying in one standardized facility to provide efficient polishing operation at low cost. The facility is designed to deal with a variety of different types of wafers, including different types of surface film, and is designed also to enables quick and low cost upgrading of the facility to meet advancing requirements of customers. The polishing facility can be placed within a cleanroom to provide efficient handling of polished wafers for further processing and fabrication tasks. Individual work component of polishing is arranged in one block having its own power supply and signal lines, and is controlled by a central controller having a dedicated software program for each work component. Therefore, if upgrading of the facility is required on any work component, only that work component requiring attention needs to be repaired/replaced, thus eliminating the need to shut down the entire facility as in conventional polishing setups. Each work component is modularized for easy replacement and inventory purposes. The overall effect of the integrated polishing facility is that the efficiency of the polishing operation is significantly improved at minimal cost of labor and capital investments.

Polishing facility

Growing community of inventors

Fujisawa, Japan

Takashi Omichi