US 4,733,631 AGranted

Apparatus for coating substrate devices

AssigneeDenton Vacuum Inc.

InventorsDavid Boyarsky, Robert T. Vaughan

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Abstract

The present apparatus has a movable table with apertures therein. In each aperture there is loaded a carrier device and each carrier holds a substrate to be coated. The carriers are advanced in a step-like fashion to a loading position under a vertical hollow cylinder. When a carrier is in the loading position, a piston is moved upward, passing through the aperture, pushing the carrier into the hollow cylinder. Each carrier has an O-ring on its periphery and the O-ring is squeezed against the cylinder wall to form a seal. Each carrier pushes against the one above it to advance a column of carriers upward in the hollow cylinder. In this way, the carriers, and the substrates they hold, pass through the hollow cylinder. Along the cylinder there are vacuum stations which act to pump down and degas the substrates. The degassed substrates eventually emerge from the upper end of the cylinder into a vacuum chamber, whereat they are coated by sputtering, or the like. The vacuum level in the coating chamber is not as low as the vacuum level at the vacuum stations along the cylinder. Accordingly, gasses in the coating chamber tend to try to escape into the vertical cylinder but are stopped by the O-ring seals on the carriers. Hence the coating chamber is not contaminated. The substrates are transmitted through the coating chamber, coated, and withdrawn therefrom through a second hollow cylinder.

Claims13

Dependent claims

An arrangement for coating substrates which are held by individual carrier means and which carrier means are continuously step moved into and out of a coating chamber, comprising in combination:

sealing devices respectively fitting on associated ones of said carrier means;
first vertical elongated cavity means having first and second ends and having sidewall means and having apertures in at least one section of said sidewall means, said first vertical elongated cavity means designed to have said carrier means with said sealing devices fit therein to provide a substantial seal to prevent gasses from passing between said carriers and said sidewall means;
means for loading said carrier means designed and disposed to move said carrier means into said first vertical elongated cavity means whereby a train of said carrier means is moved through said first vertical elongated cavity means;
vacuum pump means disposed to be in close proximity to said at least one section of said first elongated cavity means to create a vacuum in said at least one section to thereby degas substrates held by said carrier means located in said at least one section;
transport means designed and disposed to move said carrier means which have passed through said first elongated cavity means;
and vacuum chamber coating means designed to house said transport means, said vacuum chamber coating means further designed to house means to materially coat said substrates, said means to materially coat disposed with respect to said transport means to materially coat said substrates which are being moved by said transport means;
and means to remove said carrier means from said transport means and from said vacuum chamber coating means.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.