Modeling and simulation of multi coil induction heating system for semiconductor wafer processing

A quick, uniform and high temperature heating are the main requirements for processing circular semiconductor wafers. With single coil induction heating system which uses longitudinal flux heating, it is rather difficult to uniformly heat the semiconductor wafer. In this paper a multi coil induction heating system is proposed for semiconductor processing. A six coil induction heating system is modeled and simulated using ANSYS MAXWELL 3D Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tool. The excitation currents in the coils have same frequency but differ in phase by 60 in order to generate a travelling wave magnetic field. By controlling the amplitude of the currents in the working coils uniform heating of the graphite susceptor can be achieved.