Model-based Temperature Control of a Continuous Flow Heater for Efficient Processing of Silicon Wafers

This paper proposes a model-based control approach for a liquid flow heater operated within silicon wafer processing tools used in the semiconductor industry. A distributed-parameter model is presented to describe the thermal dynamic behavior of the heater. Adopting the early-lumping approach, an observer-based controller is designed. This controller ensures a vanishing steady-state error in the case of constant input signals and disturbances. The implemented feedback loop relies on an observer-based anti-windup technique. Real-world tests demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed approach.