An experimental study is carried out here to investigate the improvement of the temperature uniformity of a lamp heated eight-inch silicon wafer through the wafer rotation and translation during the ramp-up period. The effects of the rotation rate and translation speed of the wafer have been examined in detail. Moreover, the effects of the lamp-to-wafer distance and the power level of the heated lamps have been inspected. The results clearly indicate that increasing the wafer rotation rate up to certain value can improve the wafer temperature uniformity. Beyond that rotation rate an opposite effect is obtained. A similar trend is also noted for the increases of the wafer translation speed on the wafer temperature uniformity. Furthermore, the wafer temperature is more uniform for a longer lamp-to-wafer distance and lower power level of the lamps.
Our experimental data also suggest that a better arrangement of the three heated lamps can result in a better wafer temperature uniformity. For a suitable choice of the wafer rotation rate and translation speed the temperature nonuniformity on the wafer can be relatively small. At the wafer rotation speed ω= 170 rpm, wafer translation velocity Vd= 17 mm/s and lamp-to-wafer separation distance H= 90 mm for the wafer heated by a single lamp, the maximum temperature difference across the wafer can be as low as 0.5℃ for the mean wafer temperature Tmean
≈
140℃.References
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