Back to results
US 2020/0006109 A1Published application
Electrostatic chuck sidewall gas curtain
AssigneeTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.
InventorsIan HSIEH, Che-fu CHEN, Yan-Hong LIU
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present disclosure describes an apparatus. The apparatus includes a chuck for placing an object thereon, a gas passage extending along a periphery of an outer sidewall of the chuck and separating the chuck into an inner portion and a sidewall portion, and a plurality of gas holes through the sidewall portion and configured to connect a gas external to the chuck to the gas passage.
Claims20
An apparatus, comprising:
- a chuck for placing an object thereon;
- a gas passage extending along a periphery of an outer sidewall of the chuck and dividing the chuck into an inner portion and a sidewall portion;
- and
- a plurality of gas holes through the sidewall portion and configured to connect the gas passage to a gas external to the chuck.
1 more element
A method, comprising:
- loading a wafer onto a wafer-holder structure;
- performing one or more operations on the wafer;
- and
- forming a gas curtain that surrounds an outer sidewall of the wafer-holder structure.
1 more element
A system, comprising:
- a chamber comprising a wafer-holder structure that comprises:
- a chuck for placing an object thereon;
- a gas passage extending along a periphery of an outer sidewall of the chuck, wherein the gas passage divides the chuck into an inner portion and a sidewall portion;
- and
- a plurality of gas holes through the sidewall portion and configured to connect to a gas external to the wafer-holder structure to the gas passage, wherein the gas passage is configured to allow an inert gas to flow through the plurality of gas holes to form a gas curtain that surrounds the outer sidewall of the chuck;
- and
- a control device configured to control one or more operations in the chamber and the gas curtain along the outer sidewall of the chuck.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.