Plasma processing apparatus and plasma processing method
AssigneePanasonic Corporation
InventorsShogo Okita, Yasuhiro Onishi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A plasma processing apparatus includes a stock unit, a processing unit, and an alignment chamber. The stock unit supplies and collects a conveyable tray formed with a plurality of housing holes in each of which a wafer is housed. In the processing chamber, plasma processing is executed on the wafers housed in the tray supplied from the stock unit. The alignment chamber is provided with a rotating table on which the tray before being subjected to the plasma processing is set to perform positioning of the wafers on the rotating table. A housing state determination unit of a control device determines whether or not the wafer is misaligned with respect the housing hole of the tray based on a height detected by height detecting sensors.
Claims4
A plasma processing method comprising:
- carrying a tray formed with a plurality of housing holes in each of which a wafer is housed from a stock unit to an alignment unit, and setting the tray on a table;
- detecting a height at a wafer side target point of a surface of the wafer housed in each of the plurality of housing holes;
- determining whether or not the wafer is misaligned with respect to the corresponding housing hole, based on the height of the surface of the wafer at the detected wafer side target point;
- carrying the tray from the alignment unit to a processing unit and executing plasma processing when the wafer is housed in all of the housing holes of the tray on the table without being misaligned, and
- returning the tray from the alignment unit to the stock unit when the wafer is misaligned in any of the housing holes of the tray on the table.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.