Real-time monitoring of a multi-zone vertical furnace with early detection of a failure of a heating zone element

摘要

The invention is intended to prevent wafer losses during thermal treatment, wafer losses with values of up to 150,000 EUR per batch. In addition, there should be no unplanned failure of the thermal device for treating the wafers and better planning of resources. The proposed method of monitoring the thermal device (s) 10 for receiving and tempering wafer lots or batches of wafers uses a permanently applied measurement of a resistance value R ₁ in at least one heating zone 1 'of a plurality of heating zones 1', 2 ', 3', 4 ', 5' of the thermal device 10. The currently measured value R ₁ (i) of the resistor 1 in the associated heating zone 1 'is compared with a previously measured value R ₁ (i-1) of the same resistor 1. Already at a detected by the comparison deviation ΔR _{1 of} the two resistance values from the same heating zone 1 ', a warning or alarm 90 for the thermal device 100 is generated, which is located in time in front of a failure of a whole heating zone 1 in the thermal device 10.