Appeal No. 2003-0614
Application 09/520,591
such rotation being generally 90, 180 or 270 degrees
for simplicity. Wafer rotation for each wafer at all
steps in the fabrication procedure is tracked by the
host computer 1 with such wafer rotation being either
concurrent with wafer rearrangement or independent of
wafer rearrangement by the robot 5. Wafer
rearrangement and wafer rotation can take place
independently after each processing step or
periodically according to programs set up in the host
computer 1 and can be concurrent and/or at different
steps in the processing cycle. After all processing
steps have been completed for wafer fabrication and the
components on the wafer have been fabricated, one or
more parameters of the fabricated components including
components specifying spatial variation or a parameter
measured with respect to the notch are tested in
standard manner with a parameter measure system 9 with
the test results being sent to the host computer on a
wafer by wafer basis for correlation with the location
and orientation of each wafer during processing to
locate fluctuation of parameters from wafer to wafer
(correlated to wafer location) or fluctuation of
parameters across wafers (correlated to rotation) in
the fabrication process and to determine process
locations or operations which may require correction
due to [this] analysis of such fluctuations on a
rotational and rearranged wafer basis [column 2, line
65, through column 3, line 33].
Tigelaar also teaches that the robot and rotating tool
collectively constitute a sorter for rotating and rearranging the
wafers in the cassette (see column 2, lines 16 through 23), and
that it is known in the art to provide each wafer with a unique
readable number or bar code and to periodically read the number
to locate the wafer (see column 1, lines 36 through 42).
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