Asyst Technologies, Inc.

Timothy Ewald

Daniel Babbs

Matthew Coady

William John Fosnight

Jae Hong Kim

A modular sorter is disclosed in which modular sections maybe easily added and removed to add and remove load port assemblies as required by a particular wafer fabrication run. In one embodiment, a modular sorter according to the present invention include a two-wide modular section defining a minienvironment for the sorter, a wafer handling robot a pair of aligners and a centralized controller. The modular section of this embodiment includes a pair of side-by-side load port assemblies for receiving a container or open cassette and presenting the cassette to the minienvironment of the sorter for processing of the wafers therein. The present invention further includes a removable end panel. When it is desired to add additional modular sections to the sorter, the end panel is removed and replaced by a connector frame. The connector frame allows additional modular sections, including either one load port assembly or two load port assemblies, to be attached to the original modular section. All of the power and control components for the modular sections are preferably located in the centralized controller. Upon attachment of the additional modular section, the power and signal connections for the additional section are plugged into the controller. The controller then recognizes the additional section and changes the overall operation scheme to now operate as a three-wide sorter or a four-wide sorter.

Modular sorter

A dual paddle end effector robot is disclosed which is capable of parallel processing of workpieces. The end effector includes a lower paddle rotatably coupled to an end of the distal link, and an upper paddle rotatably coupled to the lower paddle. The lower paddle supports a drive assembly capable of rotating the upper paddle with respect to the lower paddle. In one embodiment of the present invention, the dual paddle end effector robot may be used within a wafer sorter to perform parallel processing of workpieces on a pair of aligners within the sorter. In such an embodiment, the robot may first acquire a pair of workpieces from adjacent shelves within the workpiece cassette. After withdrawing from the cassette, the respective paddles on the end effector may fan out and transfer the wafers to the chucks of the respective aligners. After processing of the workpieces on the aligners is complete, the fanned end effector paddles may re acquire the workpieces, the upper paddle may return to its home position located directly over the lower paddle, and then return the processed workpieces to their original cassette or to a new cassette. Parallel processing of workpieces in this fashion provides significantly greater throughput than in conventional wafer sorter systems. Throughput may be improved still further by providing buffering locations for the workpieces at the respective aligners.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Timothy Ewald