[labnetwork] SiC wafers processed in AMI P500

[Manuel Lozano]

Dear Colleagues,

we have an old Applied Materials P500 LPCVD that we use for SiO2 deposition. The robotic arm is intended for 6 inches wafers. We have been using it with 4 inches SiC wafers for many years using a pocket wafer, we etched a 4 inches pocket on a 6 inches Si wafer, and that worked perfectly.

We have now moved to 6 inches SiC wafers, therefore we do not need the pocket wafer more. Nevertheless, when we tried to process the wafers directly we discovered that the robotic arm does not recognize the presence of the wafer, as SiC is transparent, and refuses to load them.

We tried using different materials deposited in the backside to make the wafer opaque (resist, metal, polysilicon), but the result is not satisfactory as the quality of the surface is degraded.

The equipment is very old and it is not longer maintained by AMI, so we can not ask for reprogramming  the robot software.

Does any of you have experience with processing transparent wafer with robotic arms? Do you foresee any solution?

We will appreciate any suggestion

Best regards

Manuel


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Prof. Manuel Lozano
Centro Nacional de Microelectronica IMB-CNM (CSIC)
Campus UAB, C/ Til·lers, s/n
08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
tel.: +34 93 594 77 00 ext. 2120
email: manuel.lozano at csic.es
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