US 12,739,952 B2Granted

Heat treatment apparatus for heating substrate by light irradiation

AssigneeSCREEN Holdings Co., Ltd.

InventorsRyuta Tobe, Naoto Mori, Takahiro Kitazawa

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Abstract

An element set including one capacitor, one coil, one thyristor, and one regeneration diode is provided for three parallel-connected flash lamps. The one thyristor collectively effects on-off control of the current flowing through the three corresponding parallel-connected flash lamps. The thyristor is able to suppress a tail current flowing through the flash lamps during flash irradiation. Since a smaller number of element sets than the number of parallel-connected flash lamps are provided, the number of elements provided in a heat treatment apparatus is reduced as compared to the case in which individual element sets are provided for the flash lamps. This suppresses the increase in apparatus costs and reduces the installation space for the elements.

Claims4

Dependent claims

A heat treatment apparatus for irradiating a substrate with a flash of light to heat the substrate, comprising:

a chamber for receiving a substrate therein;
a holder for holding said substrate in said chamber;
a plurality of flash lamps for irradiating said substrate held by said holder with a flash of light;
a discharge circuit for passing current of 4,000 amps or less through said plurality of flash lamps to cause said plurality of flash lamps to emit light;
and
a controller for controlling said discharge circuit,
said discharge circuit including a single one element set coupled to and controlling N parallel-connected flash lamps, where N is an integer not less than 2,
wherein said one element set includes a single switching element for controlling current flowing through said N flash lamps, and further includes a single coil, a single capacitor, and a single diode.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.