Single semiconductor wafer transfer method and manufacturing system

A method of manufacturing semiconductor devices in a production line having (a) a plurality of semiconductor wafer processing stations, (b) a multilevel track system associated with the processing stations, (c) a plurality of guided transport vehicles adapted to operate independently on said multilevel tracks and each of which carries a wafer carrier between said processing stations, (d) a plurality of wafer carriers, each adapted to support and enclose a single wafer, and (e) a stocker station having a wafer carrier loading area where unprocessed wafers are introduced into the system, and a wafer carrier unloading area where processed wafers are removed from the system, each of said processing stations having (1) a transport vehicle buffer having a load zone and an unload zone, (2) a wafer carrier buffer, (3) a wafer carrier handling means adjusted to transfer wafer carriers between transport vehicles and said wafer carrier buffer, and (4) a wafer handling means to move wafers between the wafer carriers and a wafer processing apparatus at each of said processing stations, the method comprising the steps of:

• loading a process sequence into an information storage memory on each wafer carrier, and a wafer onto the wafer carrier;
• loading the wafer carrier, at the stocker station wafer carrier loading area, onto a transport vehicle;
• moving the transport vehicle along the multilevel track system to a designated processing station in response to the information contained in the process sequence stored in the information storage memory;
• unloading the wafer carrier at the designated processing station;
• performing a designated process at the designated processing station;
• altering the process sequence of the wafer carrier, to indicate the designated process step performed at the designated processing station has been completed;
• loading the wafer carrier onto one of the transport vehicles;
• moving the one transport vehicle to a next processing station in response to the altered process sequence in the wafer carrier;
• repeating the method steps contained in the process sequence until the process sequence steps in the wafer carrier are completed;
• moving the wafer carriers along the multilevel track system to the stocker station;
• and
• unloading the wafer carrier at the stocker station wafer carrier unloading area.