Main Structure of Etch Equipment

0021-02395 REV.B INSERT RING,ALUMINUM DxZ SACVD

0020-75851 VHP BUFFER LID

 

The structure of mainstream etching equipment can be divided into two parts: the main body and the auxiliary equipment. Among them, the main body of etching equipment includes EFEM (front end of equipment), TM (transmission module), PM (process module), and three modules. The EFEM module is mainly responsible for loading wafers from various handling equipment (including wafer loaders, handling robots, and overhead cranes) in the semiconductor factory into etching equipment; The TM module is mainly responsible for the transfer of wafers inside the etching equipment; PM is the module that actually etched the wafer and the related physicochemical reactions occur. The function of the auxiliary equipment is to provide guarantee support for the above three modules, and the layout is relatively independent of the main body of the machine.

With the increase of the demand for the production capacity of a single etching equipment in integrated circuit manufacturing, the number of reaction cavities of a single etching machine shows a trend from less to more. In the 1990s, Tokyo Electron first launched the Unity series with multiple reactors on a single platform, the Telius, the world's first machine with a parallel chamber structure, and the Tactras with 6/8 cavities in the 2010s. Tokyo Electron's latest Episode series can be equipped with up to 12 cavities, which greatly improves the space efficiency of etching equipment and leaves more room for fabs to expand production.

Etching equipment with multiple etching reactors is essential for fabs to increase production capacity. Because the greater the number of chambers in a single machine, the smaller the space on average for a single chamber. The maintenance of the fab purification plant requires a lot of costs, reducing the space occupied by a single equipment, effectively increasing the wafer production capacity of the purification plant per unit area, and reducing the depreciation and maintenance costs of the fab allocated to a single wafer. The reaction rate is slower, and the wafer output per unit time is lower than that of the wafer (wafer per hour) (dielectric etching equipment), which is more inclined to adopt the ultra-multi-cavity structure. However, the increase in the number of PM chambers places new demands on the load-and-transport process of the EFEM front-end module and the TM transport module.