CAD-based wafer scanning simulations applicable to the field of semiconductor device manufacturing

. This paper contributes to the development of wafer scanning simulation algorithms, which have been successfully integrated into an existing substrate handling robot simulator based on computer-aided design (CAD) software. The scanning process, which is extremely important to the field of semiconductor device manufacturing and cleanroom robotics has to be described, analyzed, mathematically modelled and later implemented into the source code of the mentioned simulator, which has been written in Visual Basic .NET programming language. As a result, the end-used is allowed to efficiently perform wafer scanning simulations in a virtual environment, without depending on the physical equipment, and be able to retrieve precise information related to the particular automated system. The proposed approach is verified and evaluated with the help of an experimental wafer scanning simulation scenario, based on SolidWorks and its application-programming interface (API).