Shin-etsu Handotai Co., Ltd.

Shin-etsu Handotai Kabushiki Kaisha

Yoshihiro Hirano

Atsushi Ozaki

Nobuo Katsuoka

Masahiko Baba

Hidehiko Nishino

Masahiko Urano

Michiaki Oda

Koji Mizuishi

Kouji Mizuishi

Isamu Harada

Yasushi Nakamura

Munenori Tomita

Seiichiro Ohtsuka

Tomohiro Kakegawa

Seiichiro Otsuka

Shigeharu Tsunoda

Junichi Uchida

Kenichi Sato

An ingot cutting apparatus having at least one coolant pocket storing the coolant to be supplied to the blade, wherein the blade-abrasive-grain portion is brought into contact with the coolant stored in the at least one coolant pocket by causing the blade-abrasive-grain portion of the blade to travel through a groove portion provided at an upper portion of the at least one coolant pocket while driving to rotate the blade so that the coolant is supplied to the blade.

Ingot cutting apparatus and ingot cutting method

The present invention is a band saw cutting apparatus including: a cutting table on which an ingot is horizontally placed; an endless-belt blade provided in a tensioned state between pulleys, the blade having a blade-abrasive-grain portion and a blade base; and a coolant spraying opening for spraying a coolant on the blade, the band saw cutting apparatus cutting the ingot by relatively feeding the blade from above to below, the blade being driven to rotate by rotating the pulleys, wherein the pulleys is configured to be rotatable about an axis thereof in both directions, and a direction of driving to rotate the blade can be changed to cut the ingot. As a result, there is provided a band saw cutting apparatus and an ingot cutting method that can stably secure the quality of the ingot to be cut, increase the lifetime of the blade, and improve the productivity.

Band saw cutting apparatus and ingot cutting method

A cylindrical grinding apparatus grinding a side face of a cylindrical ingot, having a centering means of at least three rollers and an arm holding the rollers. The cylindrical ingot is placed on a table longitudinally, its end faces being held vertically with a pair of clamps. Afterward, the centering means moves backward and forward against the ingot horizontally to bring the rollers into pressure contact with the side face of the ingot while the ingot is rotated about a central axis with a rotation means, and thereafter the ingot is ground with the grinding wheel. The cylindrical grinding apparatus and the method for grinding enable improvement of grinding processing efficiency of the ingot.

Cylindrical grinding apparatus and method for grinding

A method for measuring a diameter of a single crystal ingot pulled up in a single crystal pulling apparatus comprising: calculating the weight of the pulled-up single crystal, calculating the descent amount of the melt surface relative to the crucible wall from the calculated pulled-up weight of the grown single crystal, and then either correcting the value of the ingot diameter actually measured by the optical sensor in response to the descent amount of the melt surface level or raising the crucible by an amount equal to the descent amount of the surface level.

Method for measuring the diameter of a single crystal ingot

The cutting process is executed after the grinding process and for one semiconductor ingot, one grinding device and one inner diameter saw slicing machine are used to perform grinding process and cutting process respectively. During the grinding process, the entirety of the cylindrical body portion of the semiconductor ingot is cylindrically ground, a portion of the tail end is cylindrically ground, the orientation flat position is determined and an orientation flat is formed by surface grinding. During the cutting process the tail portion is cut off and a sample for lifetime measurement is taken and a wafer sample is cut off from the end of the cylindrical body portion on the tail side. The semiconductor ingot is reversed in the direction of the axis and the head portion of the semiconductor ingot is cut off and a wafer sample is cut off from the cylindrical body portion on the head side. Wafer samples are cut off from the end of the cylindrical body portion on the head side and from the middle portion of cylindrical body portion to divide the cylindrical body portion into two blocks.

Semiconductor ingot machining method

The diameter, the orientation flat width/notch depth and the length of the block 10p are measured by the measuring devices 71a, 71b and 71c respectively and then the machining errors .DELTA.Dp, .DELTA.Wp and .DELTA.Lp in the measured values against the set values are calculated at the error calculation unit 833. Then .DELTA.Dp, .DELTA.Wp and .DELTA.Lp are stored in memory at the memory unit 834 in correspondence with the identification codes IDi and IDj of the grinding device 5i (i=1-N) and the cutting device 6j (j=1-M) that performed the machining. Then at the average value calculation unit 835, the average values of .DELTA.Dp and .DELTA.Wp for each of the grinding devices 51-5N and the average value of the .DELTA.Lp for each of the cutting devices 61-6M are calculated. The average values of .DELTA.Dp and .DELTA.Wp are supplied to the corresponding grinding device 5i as the diameter correction value and the width/depth correction value respectively and the average value of .DELTA.Lp is sent to the corresponding cutting device 6j as the length correction value from the transmission unit 836.

Machining error correction apparatus

The growing portion of a single crystal 1 grown by the pull method is recorded and the image signal is output to a digitizing circuit 3 that converts the image signal into binary data. A memory device 4 stores the digitized images and the point P at the boundary between dark and light is detected by scanning the stored digitized images starting from the scanning-start pixel and proceeding in the direction parallel to the direction of single crystal pulling. The diameter D of the growing portion of the single crystal is determined based upon the boundary P, and the scanning-start pixel for the current operation is set at the pixel that is separated from the boundary Pb in the preceding operation by a preset number of pixels d in the opposite direction of the scan.

Crystal diameter measuring device

The present invention provides control of single crystal growth after the recovery from power failure when controlling crystal growth in an automatic mode. A source voltage is supplied to a controller 70 through a no-break power supply 62. At the time of recovery from power failure, the controller continues the automatic operation mode with the same control output as that stored when power failure is detected (84, 85) if the power failure time t is t .ltoreq.t.sub.1 (for example, 1 second), switches the control mode to the manual control mode with the same control output as that stored when the power failure is detected (86, 87) if t.sub.1 &lt;t.ltoreq.t.sub.2 (for example, 5 seconds), stops the crystal growth operation and switches the control mode to the manual control mode (88, 89) if t.sub.2 &lt;t.ltoreq.t.sub.3 (for example, 600 seconds), and separates the grown crystal from a melt 22 by upwardly moving the crystal and upwardly moves a crucible 16 (90) if t&gt;t.sub.3.

Single crystal rod pull-up growing apparatus

A single crystal pulling apparatus having a wire which is used to pull a crystal is provided with a novel wire vibration prevention mechanism. The wire vibration prevention mechanism includes wire restriction devices which restrict the movement of the wire to movement in the vertical direction. The wire restriction devices may be mechanically driven in the horizontal direction in order to center the pulled crystal. The wire restriction devices are driven by pneumatic air cylinders. Use of the wire vibration prevention mechanism avoids the formation of deformed growth of the pulled crystal and thus reduces the occurrence of dislocations in the pulled crystal.

Wire vibration prevention mechanism for a single crystal pulling

Disclosed is a method of controlling the diameter of a single crystal produced by the Czochralski method. The diameter of a tapered portion of the single crystal is controlled by controlling the temperature of a melt in a crucible and the rotational speed of the crucible. The control range of the rotational speed of the crucible is made narrower as the diameter of the tapered portion approaches closer to that of a body portion, and the rotational speed is made constant while the body portion is grown.

Crystal diameter controlling method

An apparatus is used in the production of a monocrystalline rod by Czochralski method and is adapted for measuring the diameter of the monocrystalline rod at the melt surface of the melt by processing image signal derived from an image sensor. The measurement of the diameter is conducted by determining the diameter of the monocrystalline rod at the melt surface by processing the output signal from the image sensor, and multiplying the rod image diameter with a function of the difference between the initial melt surface level and a melt surface corrected in accordance with a change in the temperature in the apparatus chamber or a change in the leval of the electrical power supplied to a heater for heating a crucible.

Apparatus for measuring diameter of crystal

A load measuring device for measuring the pulling up load of a monocystalline rod (38) grown by the Czochralski method utilizes a strain gauge (20). The monocrystalline rod (38) is pulled up by wire rope (36) consisting of multiple strands. The pulley (34) guiding the wire rope between a drum (36) and a crystal holder (44) has a guide groove which has a cross-sectional shape which is substantially identical to a semicircle circumscribing the wire rope.

Crystal ingot lifting load measuring device

A melt-surface initial position adjusting apparatus which is suitable for use in a monocrystal growing system employing the Czochralski method to adjust the vertical position of the melt surface before the growing of a monocrystal. The apparatus can ensure a highly precise measurement of a crystal-diameter measuring device, thereby enabling a reduction in the costs of producing a monocrystal bar. Before the growing of a crystal, the vertical position (H) of the surface (16A) of a melt within a crucible is measured. The crucible is moved vertically on the basis of the measured value in such a manner as to maintain the distance (L) between the melt surface (16A) and an image sensor (28) for measuring the crystal diameter at a predetermined value.

Apparatus for adjusting initial position of melt surface

An apparatus for measuring the diameter of a crystal in which an optical sensor scans along a sensing line which crosses at one point a luminous ring formed at the interface between a crystalline rod and a melt; the picture element position corresponding to a maximum luminance is discriminated when the optical sensor scans; the mean value of the picture element position is calculated over at least one revolution of the crystalline rod; and the diameter D of the crystalline rod at a portion thereof interfacing with the melt is calculated from the mean value and the level of the melt. Similarly, the minimum crystal diameter can be calculated by obtaining the picture element position corresponding to the minimum crystal diameter instead of obtaining the mean of the picture element position.

Growing community of inventors

Annaka, Japan

Yoshihiro Hirano