Owens Design

Engineering, Technical Manufacturing and Program Management

CASE STUDIES

300mm Wafer Heat and Cool Stations

Cost effective heating and cooling of 300mm wafers without contamination is extremely difficult. Owens Design has developed a 300 mm wafer pre-heat and post-cool station that provides excellent temperature uniformity, rapid heating and cooling and industry leading backside contamination.

Our cost effective module uses reliable resistive heating elements to achieve better than 2°C uniformity and up to 450°C heating in less than 15 seconds.

Critical to 300 mm wafer production, the module has extremely low backside metals and particulate contamination.

An optional cooling platen can be integrated in the same footprint to provide a very compact and easily interfaced unit.

Process gases can be introduced into both the hot and cold process chambers as an option.

Wafer pin lift mechanisms are integrated to both hot and cold platens to facilitate wafer transfer.

The module can be used as a standalone unit or integrated via a BOLTS compliant interface. The standard control interface can be either ethernet or serial or can be customized to your requirements.

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Graph of 300mm semiconductor heating rate and compared to the heater platen. wafer temperature ramps from room temperature to 400 degree C in 10 seconds

Technical Details

  • Temperature Uniformity < 2°C up to 450°C across a 300mm wafer
  • Heating: 25°C to 450°C in < 15 sec
  • Cooling: 400°C to 50°C in < 26 sec
  • Wafer Repeatability < 70 µm between each lift pin up/down cycle

Cleanliness

  • Front side: < 1 @ 0.1 µm, PWP
  • Backside: < 1,400 @ 0.2 µm, PWP
  • Metals: Ca, Cr, Fe, K, Mn, Na, Ni, Pb, Zn, Cu, Co, Mo, Ti, W and Al < 1E10/cm2
  • Metals: Fe < 5E09/cm2
  • Airborne: No degradation to ISO Class 2 environment

Reliability

  • Production worthy with 10 fielded units in SEMI production fabs
  • Wafer breakage < 10,000 wafers handled
  • MTBF: > 20,000hrs
  • MTTR: < 2hrs
  • Uptime: 98%

Serviceability

  • Modular design for fast troubleshooting and low cost FRU.
  • All components accessed from front (for BOLTS configuration).
  • Other then periodic cleaning, no maintenance is required for the system

Regulatory Compliance

  • All custom designs are compliant with SEMI S2/S8, CE, and local jurisdictional requirements

Interface

  • Standard hardware BOLTS interface.
  • Custom hardware interfaces available.
  • Communications: Ethernet or serial (custom interfaces available)
  • Communication protocol and command set can be defined to meet customer requirements

Facilities

  • Power: 208VAC, 20A
  • Chiller Fluid: 20°C @ > 1.7 GPM, 60 PSIG
  • Vacuum: 17 in-Hg min @ 1.5 SCFM
  • CDA: 60-90 PSIG, 1 SCFM
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Wafer heater chuck and lift pins

Semiconductor heater plate wafer lift pin detail

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semiconductor wafer cooling chuck

300mm wafer heating and cooling module top view with wafer cooling module move for service

semiconductor wafer heating and cooling

Semiconductor wafer heater module side view

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Graph of 300mm semiconductor heating rate and compared to the heater platen. wafer temperature ramps from room temperature to 400 degree C in 10 seconds

Testimonial

“Our collaboration with Owens Design has resulted in an industry-leading tool with excellent performance parameters and a low cost of ownership that make it extremely attractive to our customers.”

Henrik Bækbo, CTO, Capres A/S