Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd.

Masao Tsuji

Masami Ohtani

Joichi Nishimura

Akihiko Morita

Masaki Iwami

Yasuo Imanishi

Minobu Matsunaga

Takanori Kawamoto

Tetsuya Hamada

Ryuji Kitakado

Kenji Kamei

Yasuhiro Fukumoto

Satoshi Yamamoto

Kazuhiro Nishimura

Kaoru Aoki

Tutomu Ueyama

Hideyuki Taniguchi

Hiroshi Miyauchi

A heat treatment apparatus includes a support sheet placed on an upper surface of a heat-treating plate. The support sheet has, formed on an upper surface thereof, projections for contacting and supporting a substrate, and a lip for contacting edge regions of the substrate. The support sheet is formed by an etching process, and therefore areas of the sheet around the projections are recessed, rather than being perforated as in the case of laser processing. These heat-treating plate and support sheet constitute a substrate support structure capable of supporting the substrate properly.

Substrate support structure, heat treatment apparatus using same, first sheet-like object for use in the substrate support structure, method of manufacturing the substrate support structure, heat treatment apparatus, and substrate sucking method

A substrate heat-treating apparatus includes a heat-treating plate, and support pins extending through the heat-treating plate to be vertically movable relative thereto. The support pins support each substrate at a lower surface thereof such that edges of the substrate are at a higher level than a central region of the substrate. This construction facilitates air flows into and out of a space between the lower surface of the substrate and the upper surface of the heat-treating plate when the substrate is vertically moved.

Substrate heat-treating apparatus

A substrate processing apparatus reduces an instantaneous maximum power consumption at turn-on. Power receiving parts of a plurality of processing units are connected to one end of a turn-on switch respectively through switches. The other end of the turn-on switch is connected to an external power source through a breaker. Timer values are set in advance in the timers, respectively. When the turn-on switch is turned on, the timers turn on the associated switches respectively after times which are defined by the timer values, whereby the processing units are provided with electric power, each with a delay of a constant time.

Substrate processing apparatus having regulated power consumption and

A unit arrangement part comprises a chemical cabinet on its lowermost part, while coating units for forming a resist film on a substrate and developing units for developing the substrate after exposure are arranged on four corners of an apparatus above the chemical cabinet. Further, multistage thermal processing units for thermal-processing the substrate are arranged on front and rear portions of the apparatus above these wet processing units. A cleaning unit for supplying a cleaning liquid such as pure water and cleaning the substrate is arranged on a front side of the apparatus between the coating units as a substrate processing unit. Thus provided is a substrate processing apparatus having excellent workability in maintenance with a high degree of freedom in arrangement of processing units.

Substrate processing apparatus, substrate transport apparatus and

A substrate processing apparatus comprises a first substrate transfer unit having a first transfer path and a second substrate transfer unit having a second transfer path. A spin coating unit and a spin developing unit are arranged along the first transfer path, and a substrate cassette is arranged along the second transfer path. A substrate transport robot of the second substrate transfer unit selectively introduces a substrate received from a substrate transport robot of the first substrate transfer unit in one of external exposure apparatuses arranged on both end portions of the second transfer path, and discharges the substrate from the exposure apparatus for transfering the same to the substrate transport robot of the first substrate transfer unit. Thereby the substrate processing apparatus can avoid or relieve reduction of operational efficiency even if its throughput is different from that of an exposure apparatus.

Substrate processing apparatus

A substrate cooling apparatus is provided with a cooling plate disposed in a treating chamber and Peltier elements for supporting and cooling a substrate. A target temperature setter is operable to set a target temperature to which the substrate is to be cooled and a drive device drives the Peltier elements to cool the cooling plate below the target temperature. When the substrate is found to have reached the target temperature, the substrate is raised to a position free from the thermal influence of the cooling plate, to complete a cooling treatment. Consequently, the substrate is cooled at high speed to achieve a reduced cooling time. Where predetermined process modules are used, processing efficiency is improved with a reduced number of substrate cooling elements.

Substrate cooling apparatus

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Kyoto, Japan

Masao Tsuji