Particle characteristics of 300-mm minienvironment (FOUP and LPU)

Author

Kobayashi, Yoshiaki ; Kobayashi, Shigeru ; Tokunaga, Kenji ; Kato, Koji ; Minami, Teruo

Author_Institution

Dept. of Manuf. Syst. Technol., Hitachi Ltd., Ibaraki, Japan

Volume

13

Issue

3

fYear

2000

fDate

8/1/2000 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

259

Lastpage

263

Abstract

We have clarified the particle characteristics of a front opening unified pod (FOUP) and a load port unit (LPU) experimentally. The FOUP and LPU are fundamental components in 300-mm minienvironment systems. Our experiments showed the following. The particles per wafer pass (PWP) increases with the number of airborne particles outside the enclosure. The particle characteristics of FOUP and LPU can be improved by reducing the FOUP door-opening speed. The PWP of the wafer in the top slot is remarkably high. By optimizing the FOUP door-opening speed, we can achieve FOUP and LPU particle characteristics similar to those of a standard mechanical interface (SMIF) system

Keywords

clean rooms; integrated circuit manufacture; particle counting; 300 mm; FOUP; IC manufacture; LPU; airborne particles; clean rooms; door-opening speed; front opening unified pod; load port unit; minienvironment; particle characteristics; particles per wafer pass; Costs; Fabrication; Integrated circuit manufacture; Integrated circuit technology; Investments; Isolation technology; Manufacturing systems; Production; Semiconductor device manufacture; Wiring;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Semiconductor Manufacturing, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0894-6507

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/66.857933

Filename

857933