SEMICONDUCTOR WAFER ALIGNER OF AN EXPOSING APPARATUS AND METHOD THEREOF

• Main Author: PARK, GI JUN
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 01.04.2008
• Subjects: APPARATUS SPECIALLY ADAPTED THEREFOR; BASIC ELECTRIC ELEMENTS; CINEMATOGRAPHY; ELECTRIC SOLID STATE DEVICES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; ELECTRICITY; ELECTROGRAPHY; HOLOGRAPHY; MATERIALS THEREFOR; ORIGINALS THEREFOR; PHOTOGRAPHY; PHOTOMECHANICAL PRODUCTION OF TEXTURED OR PATTERNED SURFACES,e.g. FOR PRINTING, FOR PROCESSING OF SEMICONDUCTORDEVICES; PHYSICS; SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES

A wafer align apparatus of exposure equipment is provided to precisely align a wafer with the path of an exposure beam and accurately align a reticle and a wafer by aligning a wafer with a reticle previously aligned in the path of the exposure beam. A reticle is transferred in the back-and-forth direction and in the right-and-left direction by a reticle stage(110). A reticle alignment sensing part(120) senses an alignment mark formed in the reticle by receiving the beam irradiated to the reticle and reflected from the reticle. A wafer stage(130) transfers the wafer in the back-and-forth direction and in the right-and-left direction, positioning a wafer in the path of an exposure beam having passes through the reticle. A wafer alignment sensing part(140) is installed over the reticle stage to irradiate the beam aligned with the reticle aligned with the path of the exposure beam to the wafer so that the wafer alignment sensing part receives the beam reflected from the wafer to sense the alignment mark of the wafer. A control part(150) receives sense signals from the reticle alignment sensing part and the wafer alignment sensing part. The control part calculates the alignment marks of the reticle and the wafer to respectively control the reticle stage and the wafer stage so that the reticle is aligned with the path of the exposure beam and the wafer is aligned with the wafer alignment sensing part preciously aligned with the reticle.