The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 24, 2000
Filed:
Jul. 26, 1999
Norm Shendon, San Carlos, CA (US);
William R Bartlett, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A polishing apparatus including a plurality of polishing pads on respective rotating platens. The polishing platens, and therefore the attached pads also, may be of substantially different diameters. Multiple wafer heads can simultaneously polish multiple wafers on the multiple polishing pads or at different positions on one of the pads. The wafer heads are suspended from a rotatable carousel, which provides positioning of the heads relative to the polishing surfaces. Additionally, a loading/unloading station is provided. The carousel selectively positions the heads on the polishing surfaces, or positions one of the heads over the loading/unloading station while the remaining heads are located over polishing stations for substrate polishing, at which positions the wafers can be polished. The carousel can rotate to sweep all wafer heads attached thereto over respective polishing pads that they overlie.