Abstract
From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the followingquote: “Manufacturing of modern materials often involves various deposition techniques, such as chemicalvapor deposition (CVD) or physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques, in which atoms of one or moreselected types are deposited on a substrate held in low or high vacuum environments that are providedby vacuum processing (e.g., deposition, etching, etc.) chambers. Materials manufactured in this mannermay include monocrystals, semiconductor films, fine coatings, and numerous other substances used inpractical applications, such as electronic device manufacturing. Many of these applications depend onthe purity of the materials grown in the processing chambers. The advantage of maintaining isolation ofthe inter-chamber environment and of minimizing its exposure to ambient atmosphere and contaminantstherein gives rise to various robotic techniques of sample manipulation and chamber inspection. Improvingprecision, reliability, and efficiency of such robotic techniques presents a number of technological challengesfor continuing progress of electronic device manufacturing. This is especially pertinent given that thedemands to the quality of chamber manufacturing products are constantly increasing.”
NETL
NSTL