Wet Process Automation

Faith Enterprises has provided customized Wafer Transfer Systems and Stockers for Wet Process manufacturers since the mid 1980’s, making us the most experienced supplier in this field. Whether your application requires a simple operator controlled unit or a complex, Host controlled Automated System, you can trust us to provide worry-free solutions that will impress your customers and improve your chances of repeat orders.

We supply far more than just Wafer Transfer Systems. Cassette Stockers, Process Carrier Stockers, SMIF or FOUP interfacing, Wafer Lot Identification, and more can be designed into a complete integrated solution.

The following examples are just a few of the custom machines that we have designed and built for our wet process customers. Please contact us to discuss your particular requirements.

Cassette Stocker, Wafer Transfer and Process Carrier Stocker

This machine was built as a replacement of a competitor’s unit for a major semiconductor manufacturer in Phoenix, Arizona. The competitor’s machine had a severely high failure rate as well as high particle contamination of the wafers. After two years with no improvement, that machine was abandoned and Faith Enterprises was commissioned to build a replacement. Our system was installed in February of 2008 and has performed at over 98% uptime in its first two years of service.

This machine has the ability to be loaded with five 50-wafer lots at one time. Once loaded, it allows a Wet Process tool to process all five lots without any further operator intervention. The operator inputs cassettes two at a time at the Load Port. The wafers are notch-aligned and an OCR camera identifies each lot. Then the cassettes are stocked so that the next pair of cassettes can be input at the Load Port.

At any time, a pair of cassettes can be retrieved by the Stocker Robot and placed on the Wafer Transfer unit where the wafers are transferred to a contiguous, 50-slot process carrier. There the process carrier is handed off to the wet process robot.

When finished wafers are transferred back to the cassettes, a second Stocker unit stores the empty process carrier so that the wet process robot is free to perform other duties. This Stocker can store up to six empty process carriers.

100 Wafer Transfer with Buffer Queues

This machine was custom designed for CFM Technologies in 1996. Over 100 of these were installed worldwide and many are still in use today. This machine transferred four 25 wafer lots from cassettes to a 100-wafer Process carrier. Because of CFM’s unique tool had only one process carrier, it was imperative wafers be transferred in and out as fast as possible. For this reason, two Buffer Queues were added to the system. This allowed a second lot of wafers to be transferred and waiting at a Buffer Queue while the first lot was in process. When the first lot was finished, it would be transferred to the second Buffer Queue and immediately the second lot would be transferred into the Process Carrier.

The cassettes could be loaded by an operator or by two SMIF robots. A shuttle was used to move the rear cassettes forward for loading.

200mm, 50 Wafer Transfer System

This machine transfers 50 wafers between two cassettes and a 50-slot, contiguous process carrier. A Shuttle is used to move the rear cassette forward so that an operator can load or unload the cassette ergonomically.

A slightly different version of this machine interfaces electronically and mechanically to two SMIF robots.

200mm/300mm “Bridge” Transfer System

This is a “bridge” tool for customers that need to run two different wafer sizes in the same Process tool. This example transfers 50, 200mm wafers from two cassettes to a contiguous process carrier. It can also transfer 26, 300mm wafers from two Entegris Crytalpak cassettes to a process carrier without any modifications or adjustments.

Other Bridge tools have been built to handle 100mm/125mm/150mm wafers, and 150mm/200mm wafers.

300mm FOUP-to-Vertical Transfer

This system transfers 300mm wafers from two FOUP’s to a vertical Wet Process Carrier. It performs the full 50-wafer cycle in less than 100 seconds. Available features include Face to Face loading, Clean/Dirty Path, Edge-Only Wafer Contact, Notch Aligning, OCR Wafer I.D. and Qual wafer insertion/removal. This highly versatile system can be easily configured to handle many advanced requirements such as four FOUP’s (2 X Input, 2 X Output) and Process Carrier stocking. Video of this system can be seen here.