Cycle Time Analysis for Wafer Revisiting Process in Scheduling of Single-arm Cluster Tools

作     者：Yu-Xi Sun Nai-Qi Wu 

作者机构：School of Mechatronics Engineering Guangdong University of Technology Guangzhou 510006 PRC 

出 版 物：《International Journal of Automation and computing》 (国际自动化与计算杂志（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2011年第8卷第4期

页      面：437-444页

核心收录：

学科分类：080904[工学-电磁场与微波技术] 0810[工学-信息与通信工程] 0809[工学-电子科学与技术（可授工学、理学学位）] 08[工学] 080402[工学-测试计量技术及仪器] 0804[工学-仪器科学与技术] 0802[工学-机械工程] 081001[工学-通信与信息系统] 0701[理学-数学] 0811[工学-控制科学与工程] 081201[工学-计算机系统结构] 0812[工学-计算机科学与技术（可授工学、理学学位）] 

基　　金：supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 60974098) Research Foundation for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (No. 20094420110002) 

主　　题：Scheduling semiconductor manufacturing cluster tools Petri net automated manufacturing systems. 

摘      要：Some wafer fabrication processes performed by cluster tools require revisiting. With wafer revisiting, a cluster tool is very difficult to be scheduled due to a large number of possible schedules for the revisiting process. Atomic layer deposition （ALD） is a typical process with wafer revisiting that should be performed by cluster tools. This paper discusses the scheduling problem of single-arm cluster tools for the ALD process. In scheduling such a system, the most difficult part is to schedule the revisiting process such that the cycle time is minimized. Thus, this paper studies the revisiting process of ALD with revisiting times k = 3, 4, and 5, and analytical expressions are obtained to calculate the cycle time for the k possible schedules. Then, the schedule with the minimal cycle time is the optimal one. In this way, the scheduling problem of such a revisiting process becomes very simple and this is a significant improvement in scheduling cluster tools with wafer revisiting. Illustrative example is presented to show the application of the proposed method.