A wafer is clamped to a wafer holder for processing with a front plane clamping ring and backplane clips without sliding or rolling contact with the wafer that would tend to increase particulate contamination. A load arm moves a semiconductor wafer, device side first, forwardly into a loading chamber, for example a loadlock, and through an opening in a wafer holder within the chamber, where the wafer contacts the underside of an annular clamping ring, which is attached to the holder body by springs, to displace the ring away in a forwardly direction from the holder. The ring is displaced, for example, sufficiently from the holder, preferably 30 to 40 thousandths of an inch or more for standard thickness semiconductor wafers, to clear a plane at the back of the holder in which lie a plurality of clips. Latch actuators on the load arm engage and rotate the clips into the opening behind the wafer when the wafer is displaced in a forward direction out of the plane. The load arm is then retracted, allowing the springs to pull the clamp ring, and thereby the wafer, backward against the clips, with no sliding or rolling contact between the clips and the wafer. Magnets in the latch assemblies that carry the clips hold the clips in place during processing so that they will remain in alignment for engagement by the actuators on the load arm during the wafer loading and unloading.