Spatially-arranged chemical processing station

Abstract

The present invention discloses a station, e.g., for IC fabrication with a flexible configuration. It consists of an array of processing chambers, which are grouped into processing modules and arranged in a two-dimensional fashion, in vertical levels and horizontal rows, and is capable of operating independent of each other. Each processing chamber can perform electroless deposition and other related processing steps sequentially on a wafer with more than one processing fluid without having to remove it from the chamber. The system is served by a single common industrial robot, which may have random access to all the working chambers and cells of the storage unit for transporting wafers between the wafer cassettes and inlet/outlets ports of any of the chemical processing chambers. The station occupies a service-room floor space and a clean-room floor space. The processing modules and the main chemical management unit connected to the local chemical supply unit occupy a service-room floor space, while the robot and the wafer storage cassettes are located in a clean room. Thus, in distinction to the known cluster-tool machines, the station of the invention makes it possible to transfer part of the units from the expensive clean-room area to less-expensive service area.