Scheduling of dual-arm cluster tools with wafer revisiting and residency time constraints

Yan Qiao, Naiqi Wu, Meng Chu Zhou

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

85 Scopus citations

Abstract

In its fabrication, a wafer must meet its residency time constraints, i.e., it must leave its process chamber within a certain time after its process is done. It may need to visit some processing steps for a number of times, called wafer revisiting. For the typical wafer revisiting process of atomic layer deposition (ALD), this paper studies the scheduling problem of dual-arm cluster tools with both residency time constraints and wafer revisiting. To do so, a Petri net model is developed for the system. Then, with the Petri net model and based on a one-wafer cyclic scheduling method previously developed by the authors of this paper, schedulability conditions and scheduling algorithms are derived. The schedulability can be checked by analytical expressions. If schedulable, an optimal one-wafer cyclic schedule can be found by simple calculation. Thus, the proposed approach is very efficient. In addition, with the Petri net model, a simple way is presented to implement the obtained schedule. Illustrative examples are given to show the application of the proposed approach.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number6556996
Pages (from-to)286-300
Number of pages15
JournalIEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2014

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Information Systems
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Keywords

  • Cluster tools
  • Petri net
  • scheduling
  • semiconductor manufacturing

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Scheduling of dual-arm cluster tools with wafer revisiting and residency time constraints'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this