In an automated semiconductor production line, the control system of semiconductor process equipment (such as a vertical heat treatment furnace) usually controls semiconductor process components (for example, including reaction chambers, manipulators, etc.) to complete the semiconductor process in units of tasks (jobs), that is, The control system executes the semiconductor process task by task, and the task information of each wafer processing task includes the flow information of the entire processing procedure from the wafer being transferred into the reaction chamber to the process chamber after the process is completed.
For example, the wafer processing task information may include a load map recipe and a process recipe, where the transfer recipe includes the transfer path of the wafer (wafer) and the location distribution of each station, etc., and the process recipe is A set of instructions related to wafer processing technology. Users can set the necessary control conditions for processing wafers by editing each process step (step) in the process recipe, such as temperature, gas, pressure, time, etc., so that the surface of the wafer is formed film required.
As the wafer processing tasks performed by semiconductor process equipment gradually increase, the thickness of the film deposited inside the reaction chamber (such as the furnace tube of the vertical heat treatment furnace) also increases. Therefore, in order to prevent the film from affecting the normal progress of the semiconductor process , it is usually necessary to clean the interior of the reaction chamber at regular intervals to ensure the qualified rate of wafer film formation and the service life of the equipment.
Specifically, when the staff observes that the thickness of the film deposited inside the reaction chamber is relatively thick, they manually operate the control system, so that the control system controls the semiconductor process components to perform the chamber cleaning task after completing the current wafer processing task, and then Then manually operate the control system to continue to control the semiconductor process components to perform the next wafer processing task.
The information of the chamber cleaning task may include a cleaning process recipe (purge recipe), which may specifically include raising the wafer boat (boat) to the top of the furnace tube (tube), so that the furnace tube is in a closed state, and the closed furnace tube environment It is a series of command sets that pass special gas into the furnace, and then remove and discharge the impurities on the inner wall of the furnace tube and the surface of the crystal boat by physical or chemical means.
However, in the prior art, not only the film thickness deposited inside the reaction chamber needs to be manually observed and recorded, but also the operator needs to manually operate the control system to change the task state before and after the chamber cleaning task, which is not only prone to large human recording errors, It also requires a lot of manpower and manual operation time, which prolongs the downtime and maintenance time, and affects the production rhythm of the semiconductor process production line.
Therefore, how to provide a semiconductor process method and semiconductor process equipment capable of automatically cleaning the reaction chamber has become a technical problem to be solved urgently in this field.