Abstract: Disclosed is an apparatus of dry cleaning a film and particles deposited at a periphery of a wafer. The apparatus comprises a housing providing a space isolated from an outside and having an upper surface opened/closed by a cover; an upper electrode assembly mounted in the housing being separated from the cover so that its position is maintained when opening and closing the cover; a lower electrode assembly mounted below the upper electrode assembly to be moveable vertically in the housing; and means for moving the lower electrode assembly vertically. In addition, transparent observation windows are provided at a center of an upper assembly so that it is possible to check an alignment state of the wafer from the outside.

Abstract: Provided are a substrate supporting apparatus and a plasma etching apparatus having the same. There is provided a substrate supporting apparatus that can separately provide powers to a central region and an edge region by disposing an electrode supporting a substrate at the central region of the substrate supporting apparatus, and disposing an electrode receiving radio frequency (RF) power at the edge region of the substrate supporting apparatus. There is provided a substrate edge etching apparatus having the substrate supporting apparatus for removing layers or particles deposited in an edge region of a semiconductor substrate and preventing damage of a center region of the semiconductor substrate during an etching process of the substrate edge.

Abstract: In an apparatus and a method for processing a substrate, a plurality of chucks are disposed parallel with each other in a process chamber. The chucks fully support back surfaces of substrates and have a plurality of through-holes. Supports are disposed through the through-holes and movable in a vertical direction. The substrates are loaded on the chucks or unloaded from the chucks by relative movement between the chucks and the supports. Thus, an unwanted layer may be prevented from being formed on the back surfaces of the substrates while processing the substrates.

Abstract: Disclosed is a plasma etching chamber for completely dry-cleaning a film material and particles deposited at the periphery of a wafer through plasma etching while generating plasma at the top to the bottom sides of the periphery of the wafer. A pair of top and bottom anodes facing each other is placed around the periphery of the wafer under the application of radio frequency through a cathode. Alternatively, a top cathode and a bottom anode are placed around the periphery of the wafer while facing each other and a view-ring shields the area of the cathode, the anode and the wafer from the outside. A plasma etching system includes a plurality of the above-structured etching chambers. A handler takes wafers from a plurality of cassette stands or load ports, and posture-corrects the orientation frat locations of the wafers by a wafer alignment unit. The wafers are charged into the plasma etching chambers directly or via load lock chambers.