A mobile transportable electrostatic chuck for clamping thin wafers (12)
without permanent connection to an external power supply unit is
described. The mobile chuck allows a safe handling of thin substrates on
existing production equipment because the size and thickness of the
clamped substrate on the mobile chuck is similar to a standard wafer. The
chuck is made from silicon wafers itself as base material (11) using an
IC manufacturing processes. Bipolar electrode-unit-cells (10), combined
into clusters (4) and linked to an integrated fuse (5), generate a
non-uniform electric field with additional force components.
Peak-electrodes (1) are introduced with the highest field density in the
peak region and thus creating a three dimensional non-uniform electric
field with each surrounding electrode (3). Quadratic or hexagonal
electrode-unit-cells (10) enable the highest dense of unit cells, which
effectively clamp wafers (12) in close proximity to the surface (8a) of
the chuck at elevated temperatures.