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Volume 7 Issue 2
Mar.  2020

IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica

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QingHua Zhu, Yan Qiao, NaiQi Wu and Yan Hou, "Post-Processing Time-Aware Optimal Scheduling of Single Robotic Cluster Tools," IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 597-605, Mar. 2020. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003069
Citation: QingHua Zhu, Yan Qiao, NaiQi Wu and Yan Hou, "Post-Processing Time-Aware Optimal Scheduling of Single Robotic Cluster Tools," IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 597-605, Mar. 2020. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003069

Post-Processing Time-Aware Optimal Scheduling of Single Robotic Cluster Tools

doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003069
Funds:  This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61673123 , 61803397, 61603100) , Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT), and Macau SAR of China (0017/2019/ Al, 005/2018/Al, 011/2017/A)
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  • Integrated circuit chips are produced on silicon wafers. Robotic cluster tools are widely used since they provide a reconfigurable and efficient environment for most wafer fabrication processes. Recent advances in new semiconductor materials bring about new functionality for integrated circuits. After a wafer is processed in a processing chamber, the wafer should be removed from there as fast as possible to guarantee its high-quality integrated circuits. Meanwhile, maximization of the throughput of robotic cluster tools is desired. This work aims to perform post-processing time-aware scheduling for such tools subject to wafer residency time constraints. To do so, closed-form expression algorithms are derived to compute robot waiting time accurately upon the analysis of particular events of robot waiting for single-arm cluster tools. Examples are given to show the application and effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

     

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    Highlights

    • High-quality integrated circuits (ICs) are expected in semiconductor manufacturing.
    • High quality of ICs is sensitive to a wafer's post-processing time.
    • This work aims to perform post-processing time-aware scheduling for cluster tools.
    • Efficient algorithms are proposed to achieve high productivity and quality.

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