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US 7,792,350 B2Granted
Wafer center finding
AssigneeBrooks Automation, Inc.
InventorsChris Kiley, Peter van der Meulen, Forest Buzan, Paul E. Fogel
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Abstract
A number of wafer center finding methods and systems are disclosed herein that improve upon existing techniques used in semiconductor manufacturing.
Claims1
A semiconductor handling device comprising a plurality of center-finding systems including:
- a first system that determines a location of a center of a wafer by detecting wafer presence during a robotic movement that includes at least one rotation;
- a second system that determines the location of the center of the wafer using a plurality of sensors consisting of two sensors for each one of a plurality of entrances to an interior of a robotic handler, the second system applying an extended Kalman Filter to estimate a position of the wafer based upon encoder data from one or more robots;
- and
- a third system that determines the location of the center of the wafer using a contact image sensor to capture image data from a second interior of a second robotic handler while the wafer moves therethrough.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.