JPH05136044A - Baking oven - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To contrive a full automation of baking and curing processes for a photoresist and to reduce a temperature change in an oven body at the time of loading of cassettes into the oven body and at the time of unloading of the cassettes from the body to shorten a temperature recovery time. CONSTITUTION:Cassettes 3 in a loading cassette station 1 are carrier in an oven body 8 by a transfer robot 5. A plurality of shell plates 10, which are coupled with the body 8 by a flexible chain 12 and are driven by a motor 14, are provided in the body 8. The lower part of the front surface of the body 8 is provided with a flat valve 7 which is opened at the time of carrying-in and carrying-out of the cassettes. The cassettes are set in order from the upper part of the shelf plate of the uppermost step and when the carrying-up of the cassettes ends, a baking (a curing) is performed. After the baking ends, the cassettes are carried-out from the interior of the body 8 to an unloading cassette station 2 by the robot 5.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

FIELD OF THE INVENTION This invention relates to bake ovens,
In particular, the present invention relates to a baking oven used in a baking and curing process performed after applying a photoresist to a processing substrate during a semiconductor device manufacturing process or a color liquid crystal display manufacturing process.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In a conventional bake oven, a shelf is fixed in a tank, and a front door is manually opened and closed. The operator first opens the front door of the bake oven, puts the cassettes or pallets containing the processed substrates one by one on a fixed shelf in the tank, closes the front door, and the tank temperature reaches the set temperature. After waiting for the processing time set by the timer, the front door was opened and the cassette or pallet on the shelf was taken out after the processing time had elapsed.

[0003]

In the conventional bake oven described above, a series of operations such as opening / closing the front door, loading / unloading the cassette or pallet containing the processed substrate, and baking are all performed manually. Therefore, a lot of man-hours are required, and it is necessary to constantly carry out monitoring work.

Further, in the conventional example, since the front door that covers the entire front surface is opened and closed, the temperature inside the tank changes drastically when the front door is opened and closed, and after loading or unloading the cassette or pallet is completed. It took a long time to recover the temperature in the tank.

[0005]

The bake oven of the present invention has a plurality of shelf plates internally driven by a shelf drive mechanism and allows an article having a height of one shelf to pass through the front door portion. An oven main body having an opening / closing section of a size capable of performing the above operation, a cassette or a pallet accommodating a processing substrate to a shelf board in the oven main body, and a transfer mechanism for carrying out the shelf board, And a sequence controller for operating the shelf drive mechanism, the transfer mechanism, and the opening / closing section according to a predetermined procedure.

[0006]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a side view showing a partial sectional view of an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a plan view thereof. From the previous step, a plurality of substrates 4 to be processed are put in the cassette 3 and sent to the load cassette station 1. The operator confirms the processing lot and the processing conditions, confirms the display of the sequence controller 15 and the temperature controller 16,
Press the start switch. As a result, the operation described below is performed automatically.

First, the transfer robot 5 moves to a position facing the cassette 3 to be processed, and the robot fork 6 extends below the cassette 3 in the load cassette station 1 and places it. Then, the robot fork 6 returns to the origin and rotates 180 ° to face the oven body 8.
After that, the transfer robot 5 slides to the position where the cassette of the shelf plate 10 inside the oven body 8 is set, and stops.

In the oven body 8, a shelf plate 1 connected to each other by a flexible chain 12 is driven by a shelf drive motor 14 and guided by a guide rod 11 to move up and down.
A plurality of 0s are mounted, and the temperature inside the oven main body 8 is maintained at the set temperature by the temperature controller 16. After the transport robot 5 places the first cassette 3 and stops at the first loading position in front of the oven main body 8, the shelf drive motor 14 lowers the uppermost shelf 10 to the lowermost position (with the lowering limit switch). Stop).

The front portion of the oven main body 8 is constituted by a front door 13 having a handle 17 and attached to the side surface so as to be openable and closable by a hinge 18. A heater 9 is embedded in the oven 8. Part of the front door 13 is opened,
The opening is covered with a flapper valve 7.

When the top shelf 10 is set at the bottom, the flapper valve 7 is opened and the first cassette 3 placed on the robot fork 6 on the transfer robot 5 is opened.
By extending the robot fork 6, the oven body 8
It is set on the inner shelf board 10. Then, the robot fork 6 returns to the origin and the flapper valve 7 is closed.

Thereafter, the transfer robot 5 reciprocates between the load cassette station 1 and the oven main body 8 to repeat the same operation. When the uppermost shelf 10 is filled, the shelf drive motor 14 raises the shelf by one step, and thereafter, the loading on the second shelf is continued.
The same operation is continued until the final cassette is loaded into the lowest shelf. The transfer robot 5 can move the robot fork 6 up and down, and after the lowermost cassette of the load cassette station 1 has been unloaded,
It is configured so that the second and subsequent cassettes can be carried out.

When the final cassette 3 to be processed is set on the lowermost shelf 10, the robot fork 6 returns to the origin, the flapper valve 7 is closed, and the processing timer is turned on.
Then, baking or curing is performed at the set temperature for the set time.

After the timer has timed out, the flapper valve 7 is opened, the robot fork 6 is extended, and the cassette 3 on the lowermost shelf 10 in the oven body 8 is placed. Next, the robot fork 6 returns to the origin and the flapper valve closes. After that, the transfer robot 5 rotates the robot fork 6 by 180 °, slides to the first unload position of the unload cassette station 2, and stops.

Next, the robot fork 6 is extended to carry the processed substrate 4 into the first cassette storage position of the unload cassette station 2. Thereafter, the processed cassette 3 on the shelf plate 10 in the oven body 8 is repeatedly taken out to the unload station 2 by the same operation. Thus, the baking and curing operations are fully automated.

The preferred embodiment has been described above.
The present invention is not limited to this, and various changes can be made. For example, the cassette stations 1 and 2 can be moved up and down instead of moving the robot fork 6 up and down, and a wire can be used instead of the chain 12 to connect the shelves 10. Further, an N ₂ outlet is provided inside the flapper valve at the opening of the front door 13, and the N ₂ curtain can reduce the temperature change when the cassette 3 is attached and detached.

[0016]

As described above, since the bake oven of the present invention is equipped with the robot transfer mechanism and the shelf drive mechanism, it can be fully automated and the number of working steps can be greatly reduced.

Further, since the flapper valve is provided at the front door portion, it is possible to suppress the temperature change at the time of attachment / detachment of a cassette or pallet, which is large in the related art, to be low. Therefore, the temperature recovery time can be shortened and the uniformity of the temperature in the bath can be improved, so that the baking and curing operations can be stably performed in the photoresist process, which contributes to the improvement in yield.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a side view showing a partial cross-sectional view of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view of an embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 ... load cassette station, 2 ... unload cassette station, 3 ... cassette, 4 ... substrate,
5 ... Transport robot, 6 ... Robot fork,
7 ... Flapper valve, 8 ... Oven body, 9
... Heater, 10 ... Shelf plate, 11 ... Guide rod, 12
… Flexible chain, 13… Front door, 14…
Shelf drive motor, 15 ... Sequence controller,
16 ... Temperature controller, 17 ... Handle, 18
… Hinge.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An oven main body having a plurality of shelf plates driven by a shelf drive mechanism inside, and an opening / closing section having a size capable of passing an article having a height of one shelf on a front door section. A transport mechanism for loading a cassette or pallet containing processing substrates onto a shelf plate in the oven main body and unloading it from the shelf plate; a temperature controller for controlling the temperature in the oven main body; A bake oven comprising: a drive mechanism, the transfer mechanism, and a sequence controller that operates the opening / closing section according to a predetermined procedure.