Patent ID: 7661454

Claim:
An apparatus for joining an adhesive tape for support to a bottom surface of a ring frame and a bottom surface of a semiconductor wafer mounted or a center of the ring frame to integrate the semiconductor wafer with the ring frame, the apparatus comprising: a workpiece holding mechanism that holds each of a ring frame and a semiconductor wafer in a predetermined position; a tape supplying device that switches between loading of a strip-shaped adhesive tape and loading of a strip-shaped carrier tape by which a precut adhesive tape cut previously in correspondence with a size of the ring frame is held, and supplies the adhesive tape loaded thereinto toward a bottom surface of the ring frame held by the workpiece holding mechanism; a tension mechanism that applies a tension to the supplied strip-shaped adhesive tape in a width direction; a joining unit that includes a joining roller for rolling on a non-adhesion surface of the strip-shaped adhesive tape with the tension being applied thereto by the tension mechanism and a non-adhesion surface of the precut adhesive tape separated from the carrier tape folded back by a separating member while pressing these non-adhesion surfaces, and joins the adhesive tape to the ring frame and the semiconductor wafer each held by the workpiece holding mechanism; a tape cutting mechanism that cuts the joined strip-shaped adhesive tape along a contour of the ring frame; and a residual tape collecting section that takes up and collects a residual tape of the cut strip-shaped adhesive tape.