This brief presents a wafer alignment algorithm with reduced sensor number that obtains the relative distance of the wafer center and the robot hand. By 'reduced number', in spite of smaller number of sensors than the conventional method, we mean an improved method which achieves the similar results to pre-existing algorithms. Indeed, it can be designed with only three sensor data, less than four sensors of the conventional algorithm. Thus, some advantages of the proposed alignment algorithm include that it can be designed with low cost and less computing power. The proposed alignment algorithm is applied to a transfer robot for coater/developer system in semiconductor processing for verifying the performance of the method. The performance of the proposed method is validated by both simulation and experimental results.
Keywords: semiconductor wafer; three optical sensors; wafer center alignment; wafer transfer robot.