JPH0368534B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a soft landing device for transporting workpieces into and out of a heat treatment furnace in a non-contact manner.
In particular, it relates to a mounting position adjustment method for correctly defining the positional relationship of furnace tubes, forks, etc.

In the semiconductor manufacturing process, heat treatment furnaces are used to perform diffusion, CVD, and annealing treatments on objects to be processed, such as wafers, and therefore a boat loading device for loading and unloading wafers into and out of the furnace is required. Conventionally, this type of equipment has been adopted as equipment based on the boat loader method or equipment based on the paddle method, but with the boat loader method, dust is generated from the contact parts when the wafer jig is moved within the inner tube. It has the disadvantage of causing wafer defects, and in the paddle method, heat treatment is performed with a long rod (paddle) inserted into the inner tube, which causes temperature changes in the furnace, making it impossible to perform heat treatment at a constant temperature. There is a drawback.

For this reason, the applicant has developed and proposed a soft landing device that eliminates these drawbacks. According to this device, a workpiece such as a semiconductor wafer is mounted on the tip of a quartz fork, and the workpiece can be taken in and out of the furnace by moving the fork in and out without coming into contact with the furnace tube. At this time, the fork is kept in a non-contact state with the furnace tube, so no dust is generated, and the material to be processed is freely moved up and down the furnace tube, so the movement is constant. The advantage is that heat treatment can be carried out at elevated temperatures.

However, in this soft landing device, if the inner diameter of the furnace tube is made smaller for reasons such as energy saving and space saving, the clearance with the outer diameter of the fork becomes smaller, making it easier for the outer surface of the fork to come into contact with the inner surface of the furnace tube. Become. For this reason, until now it has been possible to sufficiently prevent contact between the fork and the furnace tube by simply visually aligning them relative to each other, but when the clearance becomes smaller, it becomes extremely difficult to align the two. become. In particular, with this soft landing device, a relatively long fork is moved in and out of the furnace tube, so the axes of the fork and the furnace tube must also be managed with extremely high precision, making it difficult to set the position visually. There is a problem that occurs.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to enable the positioning between the furnace tube and the fork to be performed with extremely high precision through simple operations.

In order to achieve this objective, the features of the configuration adopted by the present invention include: first, a laser oscillator is provided at a position farther from the fork support with respect to the furnace tube;
In addition, a jig having a through hole through which the laser beam passes is installed in the furnace tube at its axial center position, and the laser oscillator is set so that the laser beam emitted from the laser oscillator passes through the through hole of the jig. and the furnace tube, then attach the fork to the fork support, install a jig with a through hole that transmits the laser beam at the axial center position of the fork, and remove the laser beam from the laser oscillator. The attachment position of the fork is adjusted so that the laser beam passes through the fork and the through holes of each jig installed in the furnace tube.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be explained with reference to illustrated embodiments.

First, a soft landing device according to the present invention will be explained with reference to FIG. In the figure, a soft landing device 1 is provided with a fork portion on the opening side of a quartz inner tube 2 of a heat treatment furnace (not shown in detail), and is a workpiece placed in alignment on a wafer jig 3. The wafer 4 can be carried into the furnace tube 2 together with the wafer jig 3 and taken out. That is, the soft landing device 1 has a base 5 and a back wall 6 erected at the rear of the base. A pair of guide rails 7, 7 extending from one side to the other are arranged above and below. A support stand 8 is slidably fitted into the guide rails 7, 7, and a block 9 formed in a part of the support stand 8 is supported on the back wall 6 in parallel with the guide rails and rotatably. The feed shaft 10 is inserted and fitted. This feed shaft 10 is rotated by connecting a pulley 11 fixed to one end with a belt 13 to a back-and-forth motor 12, and when it is rotated, a mechanism installed in the block 9 moves the support base 8 in the front and back direction. You can move to On the other hand, the support stand 8 has guide rods 14 erected up and down, and supports a movable stand 15 formed in a substantially L-shape so as to be movable up and down.

A slide table 16 movable in a direction perpendicular to the front-rear direction (hereinafter referred to as the left-right direction) is placed on the horizontal part of the movable table 15, and the slide table 16 on the movable table 15 is mounted on the movable table 15 using left-right adjustment bolts 17. You can adjust the left and right positions. A vertical swinging table 18 is supported on this sliding table 16, and an eccentric cam 19 provided below is connected to the motor 2.
By rotating at 0, the vertical swing table 18 can be swung. A fork pedestal 21 is mounted on this vertically swinging table 18 with bolts 22, and a fork 23 is further fixed on this pedestal 22 with two belts 24. This fork 23 is made of a cylindrical member made of quartz, one end of which is shaved off to approximately 1/3 of its length, and the remaining portion 23a that has been scraped off is configured as a mounting portion for a wafer or a wafer jig. .

According to the soft landing device having the above configuration, when a wafer or the like is placed on the mounting portion 23a of the fork 23 and the motor 12 is operated, the support base 8 moves forward along the guide rail 7, and the fork 23 moves forward.
3 into the furnace tube 2. At this time, if the fork 23 is deformed downward toward the tip side due to mounting a wafer or the like, the motor 20 is activated to swing the vertical swinging table 18 upward, so that the fork mounting portion 23a and Wafers and the like can be kept in a horizontal state or a state close to this. After the fork 23 has entered the furnace tube 2, wafers, etc. can be installed in the furnace tube 2 by slightly moving the movable table 15 down along the guide rod 14. It is free to exit from the inner tube 2 or wait near the opening of the inner tube. Furthermore, after the wafers and the like installed in this manner are completed, they can be taken out of the furnace tube by the fork operation in the opposite manner to that described above.

In the soft landing device having the general configuration described above, the method shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B is used to adjust the attachment positions of the furnace tube 2 and the fork 23.

First, as shown in FIG.
A laser oscillator 24 is attached to the rear end position so that a laser beam can be emitted in the axial direction of the furnace tube 2. On the other hand, the guide rails 7, 7 have
At least two reference jigs 25 as shown in an enlarged view in FIG. 3 are attached. This reference jig 25 can be hooked to the guide rails 7, 7 by hooking portions 27, 27 provided at the top and bottom of the left side of the jig body 26, respectively, and when hooked in this way, the jig body 26 can be hooked to the guide rails 7, 7.
A through hole 28 formed in a part of the furnace tube 6 is positioned on the central axis of the ideal attachment position of the furnace tube 2. On the other hand, a movable jig 29, which is shown in an enlarged view in FIG. 4, is placed inside the furnace tube 2. The main body of this movable jig 29 is a partition wall 31 with rolling wheels 30 arranged at the four corners of the lower part, a weight 32 is attached to the center of the lower part of the partition wall 31, and a transparent A hole 33 is formed. This movable jig 29 can be moved in the axial direction within the furnace tube 2 by the operator's operation, and when moved to each position, it is moved by the action of the rolling wheels 30 and the weight 32. The furnace tube 2 is always kept upright, and at this time the through hole 33 is located on the central axis of the furnace tube 2.

Therefore, in FIG. 2A, the position of the laser oscillator 24 must be adjusted so that the laser beam passes through the through holes 28, 28 of the reference jigs 25, 25, which are hung on the guide rails 7, 7, respectively. For example, the laser beam emitted toward the furnace tube 2 coincides with the central axis of the ideal position of the furnace tube. As a result, the operator moves the movable jig 29 inside the furnace tube 2 variously in the axial direction and adjusts the mounting position of the furnace tube 2 so that the laser beam passes through the through hole 33 of the movable jig 29 at each position. By making adjustments, you can correctly install the furnace tube in the ideal position.

Next, as shown in FIG. 2B, after removing the reference jig, the fork 23 is temporarily fixed on the fork holder 21. Then, the movable table 15 and the sliding table 16 are placed in predetermined positions, that is, the operating position is such that the fork 23 is directly opposed to the furnace tube 2 . After doing this, at least two adjustment jigs 34 in the fork 23,
34 is placed. The adjustment jigs 34, 34 have the same overall configuration as the movable jig 29, with only the dimensions slightly different.
35 are located on the central axis of the fork 23, respectively. Therefore, if the position of the fork 23 is adjusted so that the laser beam from the laser oscillator 24 passes through the through holes 35, 35 of the adjustment jigs 34, 34, the fork 23 will be positioned coaxially with the furnace tube 2. is set to At this time, it goes without saying that the laser beam passes through the through hole 33 of the movable jig 29 in the furnace tube 2.

According to the above installation position adjustment method, since the position of the furnace tube and the fork are performed using laser light in the visible range, the position adjustment can be performed with a simple operation, and the position adjustment can be performed based on the straightness of the laser light. Since the position is adjusted, the position can be determined with high precision. As a result, even when the clearance between the furnace tube and the fork is small, the two can be reliably placed in a non-contact relationship, and the original function of the soft landing device can be fully demonstrated.

Here, the mounting position adjustment method of the present invention is not limited to the soft landing device having the above-described configuration, but may include a structure in which the specific configuration of the mechanism for moving the fork back and forth, left and right, and swinging up and down is changed as appropriate. It can also be applied to

In the above-mentioned embodiment, the position of the furnace tube was adjusted when aligning the fork support part and the furnace tube. It goes without saying that the position of the fork support portion may be adjusted based on .

As described above, the present invention includes a laser transmitter,
First, the laser beam emitted from the laser transmitter is transmitted to the furnace using a jig that is installed in the furnace tube and the fork and has a through hole that transmits the laser beam at the axial center position of the furnace tube and fork. After aligning the laser transmitter and the furnace inner tube so that it passes through the through hole of the jig installed in the inner tube, the fork is attached to the fork support and the laser beam emitted from the laser transmitter is Since the mounting position of the fork is adjusted so that it passes through the through hole of the jig, it is possible to perform extremely high-precision alignment with a simple operation and without the need for special skill. Even if the clearance between the furnace tube and the fork is small, there are various effects such as the ability to reliably align the forks so that they do not come into contact with the inner wall of the furnace tube.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an overall view of the soft landing device, FIGS. 2A and 2B are schematic perspective views for explaining the method of the present invention, and FIGS. 3 and 4 are perspective views of a jig. 1... Soft landing device, 2... Furnace tube, 4... Wafer, 7... Guide rail, 12
... Motor, 15 ... Movable table, 18 ... Vertical swing table, 20 ... Motor, 21 ... Fork pedestal, 2
3...Fork, 24...Laser oscillator, 25...
...Reference jig, 28...Through hole, 29...Movable jig,
33...Through hole, 34...Adjustment jig, 35...Through hole.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. When installing a soft landing device that has a cylindrical furnace tube and a cylindrical fork that carries a workpiece at its tip and takes it in and out of the furnace tube, first attach the fork support to the furnace tube. A laser oscillator is provided at a position farther than the section, and a jig equipped with a light-transmitting device that transmits the laser beam is installed at the axial center position of the furnace tube, so that the laser beam emitted from the laser oscillator is transmitted through the furnace tube. Align the laser oscillator and the furnace tube so that it passes through the through hole of the tool,
Next, the fork is attached to the fork support part, and a jig with a through hole that transmits the laser beam is installed at the axis of the fork, so that the laser beam from the laser oscillator enters the fork and the furnace tube. A method for adjusting the mounting position of a soft landing device, characterized in that the mounting position of the fork is adjusted so that it passes through the through hole of each installed jig.