Patent ID: 7556712

Claim:
An apparatus for manufacturing semiconductor devices, comprising: a dry cleaning module configured to conduct a cleaning process on a backside of a wafer, resulting in a cleaned wafer, the dry cleaning module including: a laser irradiation section configured to irradiate a laser beam onto the backside of the wafer, and a wafer holder configured to hold the wafer in contact with edges of the backside of the wafer so as to expose the backside of the wafer to the laser beam but without contact with a front side of the wafer; and a wafer chuck configured to chuck the backside of the wafer, to deliver the wafer to the wafer holder, and to receive the cleaned wafer from the wafer holder; and an illumination module configured to conduct an optical illumination process of photolithography on the front side of the cleaned wafer, wherein the wafer holder has a horizontally extending first member that extends along the front side of the wafer, above the front side of the wafer, and has a plurality of second members that extend downward from ends of the first member, past sides of the wafer, and that contact the edges of the backside of the wafer.