Shinko Electric Company, Ltd.

Teppei Yamashita

Masanao Murata

Hitoshi Kawano

Tsuyoshi Tanaka

Teruya Morita

Atsushi Okuno

Mitsuhiro Hayashi

Masanori Tsuda

Akio Nakamura

Masanori Onishi

Hidemitsu Tabata

Mitsuji Karita

Yuji Nishikawa

Hiroyuki Oyobe

Takahide Hoshiko

Tutomu Shinya

Masanao Sugita

Hiromi Morita

A portable closed container has a container body, and a lid for opening and hermetically closing the opening of the container body, in which an internal atmosphere thereof is replaced with an inner atmosphere suitable for an article contained in the container through a gas purging operation. The container is improved such that the lid is a hollowed body with at least one purging wall hole.

Portable closed container

Disclosed is an electronic substrate processing system comprising a processing equipment for processing electronic substrates including semiconductor wafers and liquid crystal substrates; a cleaning equipment for cleaning said electronic substrate in a predetermined processing step; a portable closed container for accommodating a cassette containing said electronic substrate; a purging station for gas-purging said portable closed containers; and a storage member for storing said portable closed containers, wherein said cassette accommodates said electronic substrates which have been cleaned by said cleaning equipment being set in said portable closed container and purged with an inert gas in said purging station, and said portable closed container or containers is stored in said storing section when necessary.

Electronic substrate processing system using portable closed containers

A conveying system provides a cassette accommodating workpieces; a container containing the cassette; a transferring device for conveying the cassette while supporting it or conveying the container which is empty or contains the cassette while supporting it, the transferring device having a supporting device for supporting the cassette. In the conveying system, a handle is provided on the upper surface of the container so that it is supported by the supporting device.

Conveying system

Disclosed is a wafer conveying system for a clean room which is high in wafer conveying efficiency, and makes it possible to achieve a variety of processing operations with high efficiency. The wafer conveying system in a clean room comprises: an interface equipment cooperating with a conveying system to transfer wafers therebetween which is adapted to convey articles between manufacturing lines; a conveying path extended from the interface equipment; on intra-bay wafer conveying equipment which is moved along the conveying path; and a single or plural wafer processing equipments arranged along the conveying path, thus forming one processing line, the conveying system operating to convey cassettes containing wafers, the interface equipment operating to take a specified number of wafers out of a single or plural cassettes which are delivered to the interface equipment, and place the wafers in an auxiliary cassette provided for the one processing line only, and the intra-bay wafer conveying equipment operating to receive the auxiliary cassette, and move to a specified one of the wafer processing equipments, and to give the wafers to the specified wafer processing equipment and receive wafers therefrom.

Wafer conveying system in a clean room

A gas purge unit for a portable closed container is defined by a purge box including an opening, and a container stand around the opening on which a closed container is set; a gas supplying inlet coupled to a gas supplying source, and a gas discharging outlet; and a lifting mechanism for closing the opening from inside of the purge box and controlling the locking and unlocking operations of a locking mechanism provided in the lid of the container.

Gas purge unit for a portable container

An ID recognizing system for a semiconductor manufacturing system includes IC modules set in surfaces of containers which accommodate wafers and are conveyed from one device to another in the semiconductor manufacturing system. Each IC module is capable of transmitting and receiving signals from fixed stations and includes a reloadable memory. The semiconductor manufacturing system is made up of a number of devices for performing manufacturing operations on the wafers in the containers, and each of the devices include one of the fixed stations. The IC module is powered by the energy of radio waves received from the fixed station in the device in which said container has been placed for processing of the wafers therein. The radio communication is in the form of communication packets which include data on individual wafers in the cassettes so that the individual wafers can be processed separately. The position or off-set of the data within the packet indicates the position of the corresponding wafer within the container.

ID recognizing system in semiconductor manufacturing system

An article storage house in a clean room for airtightly accommodating a wafer cassette, etc. in which the wafer cassette carried in from the outside of an article carry-in/out portion is accommodated into a container by an automatic article delivery unit disposed in the article carry-in/out portion or it is carried in the article storage house while it is accommodated in the container and is stored in sections of the article storage house. An inert gas purge mechanism and an automatic container cleaning portion are disposed in the automatic article delivery unit or each section.

Article storage house in a clean room

An unmanned conveying device for a clean room is capable of restraining a spontaneous oxide film from growing in case that an unmanned carriage is obliged to stop for a long time due to its own cause of a cause at a destination spot while it conveys a semiconductor wafer from one spot to the destination spot. It is a first aspect of the invention to provide the unmanned conveying device which is self-propelled for conveying an object from a ground facility to a destination spot while loading an object to be conveyed thereon, characterized in that the object is accommodated in a container and the container is connected to an inert gas reservoir through a gas supply passage so that the atmosphere in the container can be replaced by a nitrogen gas. It is a second aspect of the invention to provide an unmanned conveying device for a clean room provided with a container for accommodating an object to be conveyed therein, the container being connected to an inert gas reservoir through a gas supply passage so that the air in the container can be replaced by a nitrogen gas, characterized in that the unmanned conveying device has a coupler unit mounted thereon and connected to the gas supply passage and the inert gas reserving source is located on the ground and connected to a coupler unit of a coupler device on the ground through a pipe and the gas supply passage is connected to the inert gas reservoir through both coupler unit.

Unmanned conveying device in clean room

A wafer storing, closed container for use in a clean room of a semiconductor manufacturing system is provided with an attached inert gas tank so as to eliminate the need to convey the container to an inert gas purge station to supplement the inert gas supply in the container due to leakage. A gas passageway is formed in a body of the container in such a manner that one end thereof is open inside the container. The other end is open outside the container. The portable inert gas tank is detachably connected to the other end of the gas passageway so as to automatically supplement the container with the inert gas.

Closed container to be used in a clean room

A wafer keeping apparatus includes a closed wafer keeping space, and an arrangement for circulating an inert gas through a filter and then through the wafer keeping space. In one embodiment, several wafer keeping shelves are each provided within the space, and the inert gas is supplied through a respective filter to flow across each shelf. In another embodiment, a plurality of wafer keeping spaces are each accessible through a respective door which forms an airtight seal when it is closed, and respective filters are provided on opposite sides of the space, the inert gas being supplied to the space through one filter and exiting the space through the other filter. In a further embodiment, several of the wafer keeping spaces are provided at angularly and vertically spaced locations in a rotatable stocker body provided within a casing, and several vertically spaced doors are provided on the casing to provide access to respective wafer keeping spaces in the stocker body.

Wafer airtight keeping unit and keeping facility thereof

A moving robot system, employing a charging control system for robots, is configured by plural moving robots, at least one charging station and a control station. Each moving robot is designed to perform an operation thereof in accordance with programs stored therein under control of the control station. When the power of a charging-type-battery equipped in each moving robot is consumed and lowered to the predetermined level, it automatically moves to its nearest charging station designated by the control station other than the charging station which is used for another moving robot. In this case, the control station controls the moving robots such that plural moving robots are not simultaneously concentrated to one charging station.

Charging control system for moving robot system

A self-contained unmanned vehicle (robot car) is designed to be capable of independently traveling, on the basis of previously specified geographic data, to convey parts, finished products, etc. etc. in a factory or similar, and achieves fine travel position control while simultaneously reducing the X memory capacity for the geographic data and ensures easy preparation and entry of geographic data and facilitates the comprehensibility of the contents of the geographic data. The vehicle includes: a first memory for storing the coordinate data of the node located on the traversable travel path; a second memory for storing the geographic data consisting of operation codes indicating the travel path conditions, and a scene command with the main operands denoting the continuous distance of the travel path under these operation codes; a decision-making unit for determining the path to be traversed by establishing the nodes to be traversed by the unmanned vehicle on its approach towards the designated target location; and a travel control section for controlling the travel movement of the unmanned vehicle on the basis of scene commands in accordance with the pre-set sequence in which the predetermined nodes are to be traversed; and, furthermore, a geographic data inputting device for entering the geographic data; and a geographic data display for displaying, during the input operation to enter the georgaphic data with the geographic data input device, line segments whose length corresponds to the value of the main operand, by means of a line type previously set in accordance with the operation code type.

Growing community of inventors

Ise, Japan

Teppei Yamashita