Tokyo Electron Limited

Kouji Okamura

Masami Akimoto

Hiroharu Hashiguchi

Hiroshi Tomita

Akira Miyata

Tomohiro Kaneko

Shuji Iwanaga

Shinichiro Araki

Syuzo Fujimaru

Yuuichi Nishijima

Tomonori Shin

In a coating and developing apparatus applied to liquid-immersion light exposure, substrates without an appropriately formed protective film can be recovered without adversely affecting normal-substrate processing efficiency, and in addition, removal of protective films can be simplified. In the coating and developing apparatus of the present invention, abnormal substrates not appropriately surface-coated with a protective film during liquid-immersion light exposure are queued in a queuing module, instead of being loaded into an exposure unit, and after the immediately preceding substrate has been unloaded from the exposure unit and loaded into a designated module, for example, a pre-developing second heating module, each abnormal substrate is loaded into the designated module in order to prevent so-called 'scheduled transfer' from being affected, and a protective-film removing unit is also controlled to process the abnormal substrate.

Coating and developing apparatus, operating method for same, and storage medium for the method

In the present invention, a heating plate is divided into a plurality of regions. Integrated values of temperature fluctuations in each of the regions when a substrate is mounted on the heating plate in a normal state without extraneous matter are collected. A Mahalanobis reference space in the discriminant analysis method is formed based on the integrated values at normal time. During actual heat processing, an integrated value of temperature fluctuation of each of the regions when the substrate is mounted on the heating plate is then detected, so that a Mahalanobis distance about the integrated value during the processing is calculated based on the integrated value during the processing and the Mahalanobis reference space obtained in advance. Whether or not there is extraneous matter on the heating plate is determined by comparing the calculated Mahalanobis distance to a predetermined threshold value.

Method of detecting extraneous matter on heat processing plate, heat processing apparatus, program, and computer-readable recording medium with program recorded thereon

The present invention is a method of performing processing for a substrate including the step of carrying the substrate, which has been pre-treated, to a heat treatment unit for heating the substrate, prior to supplying a treatment solution to the substrate to perform solution treatment, in which the carrying is performed such as to fix a period after the pretreatment for the substrate is completed and before it is carried to the heat treatment unit. According to the present invention, for example, in a lithography process, the substrate is carried such as to fix the period after exposure processing that is the pretreatment and before the substrate is carried to the heat treatment unit where heat treatment that is the following treatment is performed, whereby the degrees of chemical reaction of coating films by the exposure processing become uniform between the substrates.

Substrate processing method, substrate processing apparatus and substrate carrying method

Judging method and processing apparatus

Substrate processing method apparatus and substrate carrying method

The substrate unloaded from the exposure device is received at the interface unit, and then carried by the substrate carrying means to the heat treatment unit, where a heat treatment is carried out on the substrate. After that, the substrate is carried from the heat treatment unit to the cooling unit, where the substrate is cooled. After the completion of the cooling process, the substrate is carried by the carrying means from the cooling unit to the development unit, where the resist film on the substrate is developed. In this resist process, the required time for the process at the heat treatment unit is changed in accordance with the required time for the process at the exposure unit. The required time for the process at the heat treatment unit is equalized with the required time for the process at the exposure device. The required time for the process at the heat treatment process is changed by prolonging or shortening the pre-process at the heat treatment unit.

Resist processing system and resist processing method

Resist processing process

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Kumamoto, Japan

Kouji Okamura