Abstract: An automated diffusion furnace load station has a cassette and wafer transporter which selectively transports, using a support assembly, wafer-filled cassettes from a delivery station to a transfer post over which a loaded cassette is lowered to suspend the set of wafers above the cassette. The transporter causes the support assembly to release the cassette and engage the wafers to transfer them as a set to a carrier of a diffusion furnace tube. The process is reversed for unloading processed wafers from a furnace carrier and loading them into a cassette. The process further may be sequentially performed to exchange sets of processed wafers from a furnace carrier with sets of unprocessed wafers located in cassettes at a delivery station. The support assembly is used to selectively support a cassette or a set of wafers removed from a cassette by selectively positioning a pair of jaws relative to a cassette or to a set of wafers for supporting the same.

Abstract: A device to load semiconductor wafers into a furnace when the wafers are contained in a boat, the device including a tower movable horizontally on rails and a ram mounted on the tower to be independently movable horizontally so that the joint movement of the ram and the tower provide a telescoping effect, the ram also being tiltable in a vertical plane to a position with its end higher than the portion attached to the tower whereby a boat carrier held on the end of the ram in its tilted position can be placed in the furnace, lowered into contact with the furnace floor by moving the ram to a horizontal position and then retracted without causing sliding of the boat carrier against the furnace floor.

Abstract: A closure and seal construction for a high-pressure oxidation furnace and the like having a quartz chamber and an integral quartz wall formed with an opening for receiving into the chamber material to be processed, the wall providing an annular surface surrounding the opening and being formed with an annular recess in the surface surrounding the opening; a combined cooling and sealing tube mounted in the recess and protruding slightly therefrom; a closure mounted for engagement with the tube and wall surface; and the tube having an elasticity responsive to a closing pressure to resiliently retract and provide simultaneous sealing engagement of the closure with the wall surface and tube.