Plasma processing apparatus

• Main Authors: YAMAMOTO HIDEYUKI, ENAMI HIROMICHI, KAGOSHIMA AKIRA, IKUHARA SHOJI, MATSUMOTO EIJI, KARASHIMA YOSUKE, SHIRAISHI DAISUKE
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 23.11.2006
• Subjects: BASIC ELECTRIC ELEMENTS; ELECTRIC SOLID STATE DEVICES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR; ELECTRICITY; SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES

There is provided a preventive maintenance technique capable of diagnosing apparatus conditions without causing serious decrease in uptime ratio. A plasma process apparatus is composed of a plasma processing main frame, and an apparatus controller controlling the plasma processing main frame. The plasma processing main frame has a vacuum process chamber, an exhaust device evacuating the vacuum process chamber, a mass flow controller supplying a process gas into the vacuum process chamber, a stage electrode receiving a workpiece and holding it by adsorption, a high-frequency electrical source applying a high-frequency electrical power to the supplied process gas to generate plasma, and a transfer device placing the workpiece on the stage electrode and carrying out the processed workpiece. The apparatus controller controls the plasma processing main frame in accordance with a predetermined procedure and is provided with a diagnosis device which acquires a plurality of recipes for processing workpieces carried in the chamber and apparatus parameters of the plasma processing apparatus when a specific recipe of the above recipes is executed, whereby the condition of the plasma processing main frame is diagnosed based on the acquired apparatus parameters.