An apparatus for processing wafers one at a time. The apparatus has a vacuum chamber 1 into which wafers are loaded through a pair of loadlocks 3, 4 which are spaced one above the other. A robot within the vacuum chamber 1 has a pair of gripper arms 22, 29 which are moveable along and rotatable about a vertical axis 23 so as to be moveable between the loadlocks 3, 4 and a wafer processing position. Each of the loadlocks 3, 4 has a vertically moveable portion 8, 26 which is moveable away from the remainder of the loadlock to provide access in a horizontal plane for one of the gripper arms 22, 29.
This application is a divisional of application Ser. No. 09/293,939, filed on Apr. 19, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,350,097 the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference and for which priority is claimed under 35 U.S.C. .sctn.120.
A high-speed wafer-processing apparatus and method that employs a vacuum chamber having at least two wafer transport robots and a process station. The vacuum chamber interfaces with a number of single-wafer load locks that are loaded and unloaded one wafer at a time by a robot in atmosphere. Four load locks are sized to allow for a gentle vacuum cycling of each wafer without significant pumpdown delays. The robots in the vacuum chamber move wafers sequentially from one of the load locks to a process station for processing and then to another one of the load locks for unloading by the atmospheric robot.
