Dual cassette load lock

US6454519B1 · kind B1 · utility

Assignee

• Applied Materials, Inc. · US

Inventors

• Masato Toshima · Sunnyvale, US
• Phil Salzman · San Jose, US
• Steven Murdoch · Cambridge, GB
• Cheng Wang · San Jose, US
• Mark A. Stenholm · San Jose, US
• James Howard · Jefferson City, US
• Leonard Hall · San Jose, US
• David Cheng · Sunnyvale, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Mar 7, 1997
• Grant date: Sep 24, 2002
• Expiry date: Mar 7, 2017

Classification

• Technology area (CPC Y): Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
• CPC primary: Y10S414/14
• WIPO field: Semiconductors
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A workpiece loading interface is included within a workpiece processing system which processes workpieces, typically wafers, in a vacuum. The workpiece loading interface includes two separate chambers. Each chamber may be separately pumped down. Thus, while a first cassette of wafers, from a first chamber is being accessed, a second cassette of wafers may be loaded in the second chamber and the second chamber pumped down. Each chamber is designed to minimize intrusion to a clean room. Thus a door to each chamber has a mechanism which, when opening the door, first moves the door slightly away from an opening in the chamber and then the door is moved down parallel to the chamber. After the door is opened, a cassette of wafers is lowered through the opening in a motion much like a drawbridge. The cassette may be pivoted within the chamber when the position from which wafers are accessed from the cassette differs from the position from which the cassette is lowered out of the chamber.