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AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsJohn Paul Babinski, Bruce Irving Bertelsen, Karl Heinz Raacke, Valdeko Harry Sirgo, Clarence Jay Townsend
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The teaching discloses a dual bidirectional minimum volume self-centering air tract system for transporting semiconductor wafers or geometrically similar parts-in-process to and from processing tool stations in a random type manner and embodying controls to identify and collect treated wafers in segregated lots. The enclosed system is at a positive pressure to avoid ambient contamination. The enclosed track system further embodies a device for the combined computerized control of individual wafer routing in the system, humidity, temperature, and particulate content of the fluid within and utilized by the transport system while supplying and receiving wafers to processing tool stations which may have a wide variation of ambient conditions. Further the transport system embodies among other features a device for bidirectional travel with cross over intersections, directional control means, buffer sections and a fluid vector from a lower plenum for maintaining wafers centered on a fluidic cushion track so as to avoid edge contact of the wafer against any part of the apparatus and minimal backside or back flat face contact with the track membrane. The system also provides a device for sending wafers into the system and collecting processed pieces in suitable containers in lot or random form.
A minimum volume enclosed semiconductor self-centering fluidic dual lane unidirectional transport system comprising the following interacting elements,
A wafer transport system comprising,
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.