Patent ID: 7089680

Claim:
A conveyor system for processing substrates in plural vacuum processing chambers, the conveyor system including: a loader; a vacuum loader; and double lock chambers, having a loader side and a vacuum loader side, and having a gate valve for said loader side and another gate valve for said vacuum loader side, wherein said vacuum loader has (1) a transfer chamber connected to said double lock chambers via the another gate valve; (2) a conveyor structure; and (3) plural vacuum processing chambers, wherein said loader has a transfer device transferring substrates to be processed from a cassette in said loader to one of said double lock chambers, wherein said vacuum loader has said conveyor structure which transfers substrates to be processed, from said one of the double lock chambers to at least one of said plural vacuum processing chambers, via said transfer chamber; wherein each of said plural vacuum processing chambers has a substrate table to maintain a surface of a substrate, treated in the at least one of the plural vacuum processing chambers, horizontal during a vacuum processing, wherein said conveyor structure in said vacuum loader transfers processed substrates from said at least one of said plural vacuum processing chambers to one of said double lock chambers, via said transfer chamber, and wherein said transfer device in said loader returns said substrates from the other one of the double lock chambers to their original positions in the cassette in which said substrates are stored prior to processing, surfaces of the substrates which have been processed being kept horizontal when said transfer device returns said substrates.