FOUP
Encyclopedia
FOUP is an acronym for Front Opening Unified Pod or Front Opening Universal Pod..
It is a specialised plastic enclosure designed to hold silicon
wafers
securely and safely in a controlled environment, and to allow the wafers to be removed for processing or measurement by tools equipped with appropriate load ports and robotic handling systems.
FOUPs began to appear along with the first 300mm wafer processing tools in the mid 1990s. The size of the wafers and their comparative lack of rigidity meant that SMIF
was not a viable technology. FOUPs were designed with the constraints of 300mm in mind, with the removable cassette being replaced by fins in the FOUP which hold the wafers in place, and the bottom opening door being replaced by a front opening door to allow robot handling mechanisms to access the wafers directly from the FOUP. The weight of a fully loaded 25 wafer FOUP at around 9 kilograms means that automated material handling systems are essential for all but the smallest of fabrication plants.
Each FOUP has various coupling plates, pins and holes to allow the FOUP to be located on a load port, and to be manipulated by the AMHS (Automated Material Handling System). FOUPs may also contain RF
tags that allow them to be identified by readers on tools, in the AMHS etc.
FOSB is an acronym for Front Opening Shipping Box
It is a specialised plastic enclosure designed to hold silicon
Silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...
wafers
Wafer (electronics)
A wafer is a thin slice of semiconductor material, such as a silicon crystal, used in the fabrication of integrated circuits and other microdevices...
securely and safely in a controlled environment, and to allow the wafers to be removed for processing or measurement by tools equipped with appropriate load ports and robotic handling systems.
FOUPs began to appear along with the first 300mm wafer processing tools in the mid 1990s. The size of the wafers and their comparative lack of rigidity meant that SMIF
Smif interface
Acronym For Standard Mechanical InterFace. This is a SEMI standard, .An Isolation technology developed in the 1980s by group known as "micronauts" at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto...
was not a viable technology. FOUPs were designed with the constraints of 300mm in mind, with the removable cassette being replaced by fins in the FOUP which hold the wafers in place, and the bottom opening door being replaced by a front opening door to allow robot handling mechanisms to access the wafers directly from the FOUP. The weight of a fully loaded 25 wafer FOUP at around 9 kilograms means that automated material handling systems are essential for all but the smallest of fabrication plants.
Each FOUP has various coupling plates, pins and holes to allow the FOUP to be located on a load port, and to be manipulated by the AMHS (Automated Material Handling System). FOUPs may also contain RF
Radio frequency
Radio frequency is a rate of oscillation in the range of about 3 kHz to 300 GHz, which corresponds to the frequency of radio waves, and the alternating currents which carry radio signals...
tags that allow them to be identified by readers on tools, in the AMHS etc.
FOSB is an acronym for Front Opening Shipping Box