Evaluation of high-speed linear air-knife based wafer dryer

摘要

A single wafer linear drying setup was successfully designed and tested. This set up combines high speed drying and a low number of added drying defects. Two regimes of drying are proposed and the effect of the gas flow (external mechanical force) and the air-knife speed for different surface properties was studied. For evaluation of the performance of the drying set up in terms of adding defects during drying, a particle inspection test was performed. A study of the process window showed that the best performance was achieved for a maximum gas flow (200L.M~(-1)), an air-knife height of 2.6 mm and a tilting angle of applying the air-knife of below 50°. Visual inspection after the drying process reveals that even for a very high drying speed (ISOmm.s~(-1)) complete liquid removal is achieved with very low added drying defects.