Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp. Ltd.

Yuh-Dean Tsay

Li-Ren Lin

Wen-Yao Chen

Hsueh-Cheng Wu

Shih-Chieh Liao

An interlock system prevents collision of handling equipment and damage to wafers in an automated wafer transport apparatus during manual control by an operator. Sensors are used to sense when wafer transport arms and wafer stage are both in their home positions. A controller is responsive to the sensors for operating the lockout system such that attempted activation of the transport arm by the operator is locked out unless both the stage and the arms are in their home positions. The lockout system preferably comprises normally closed electrical relays.

Interlock system for semiconductor wafer transport apparatus

A visualizing method for the working condition of the semiconductor's manufacturing machines is disclosed. Firstly, the datas of different stages in a processing line are collected from the key-stage report of the processing line. The datas are &ldquo;MAIN&rdquo;, &ldquo;MRUN&rdquo;, &ldquo;AFTER&rdquo; and &ldquo;PRE&rdquo;, meaning the working condition of the stage. Every stage has a group of data. Specified stage-pairs in the processing line are determined. These pairs are photolithography and etching, photolithography and implanting and others. The data of each stage-pair is sequentially put in a bar chart. Then the pairs are sequentially arranged in the order of the processing line. One pair has a supplied stage and a requested stage. From the bar chart, supervisors of the processing line know the condition and the priority of every pair, and the relationship between the supplied stage and requested stage. According to the visual presentation, the supervisors can easily make decisions of the allocation of the tools in the processing line.

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Ping-Tung, Taiwan

Yuh-Dean Tsay