Non-contact Transportation of Flat Panel Substrate by Combined Ultrasonic Acoustic Viscous and Aerostatic Forces

In recent years, the size of plane substrates and semiconductor wafers has increased. As conventional contact transportation systems composed of, for example, carrier rollers, belt conveyers, and robot hands carry these longer and wider substrates, the increased weight results in increased potential for fracture. A noncontact transportation system is required to solve this problem. We propose a new noncontact transportation system combining acoustic viscous and aerostatic forces to provide damage-free transport. In this system, substrates are supported by aerostatic force and transported by acoustic viscous streaming induced by traveling wave deformation of a disk-type stator. A ring-type piezoelectric transducer bonded on the stator excites vibration. A stator with a high Q piezoelectric transducer can generate traveling vibrations with amplitude of $3.2{\mu}m$. Prior to constructing a carrying road for substrates, we clarified the basic properties of this technique and stator vibration characteristics experimentally. We constructed the experimental equipment using a rotational disk with a 95-mm diameter. Electric power was 70 W at an input voltage of 200 Vpp. A rotational torque of $8.5\times10^{-5}Nm$ was obtained when clearance between the stator and disk was $120{\mu}m$. Finally, we constructed a noncontact transport apparatus for polycrystalline silicon wafers $(150(W)\times150(L)\times0.3(t))$, producing a carrying speed of 59.2 mm/s at a clearance of 0.3 mm between the stator and wafer. The carrying force when four stators acted on the wafer was $2\times10^{-3}N$. Thus, the new noncontact transportation system was demonstrated to be effective.