Automatic apparatus for continuous treatment of leaf materials with gas

Abstract

The invention provides a novel automatic apparatus for the continuous treatment of wafer materials, e.g. of silicon semiconductor, with gas plasma provided with a plural number of the gas plasma reaction chambers, transfer devices for bringing the wafer materials into and out of each of the reaction chambers and automatic control mechanism for controlling the individual parts of the apparatus in linkage operation. The transfer devices are composed of a main transfer conveyor extending in parallel with the array of the reaction chambers and over whole length of the array, a plural number of branched transfer conveyors each connecting one of the reaction chambers with the main transfer conveyor, a mechanism for transferring the wafer between the main transfer conveyor and one of the branched transfer conveyor and a mechanism for bringing the wafer material from the branched transfer conveyor to the gas plasma reaction chamber or vice versa. Transferring and gas plasma treatment of the wafer materials can be performed in continuous and successive linkage operations by virtue of the automatic control mechanism. The inventive apparatus is very advantageous in the continuous and concurrent handling of a plural number of wafer materials in the process of the gas plasma treatment so that excellent productivity of the process and highly uniform quality of the treated wafer materials are ensured.