Coating and developing apparatus and method

Abstract

In one embodiment, a coating and developing apparatus includes a processing block having two early-stage coating unit blocks, two later-stage coating unit blocks and two developing unit blocks, each unit blocks being vertically stacked on each other, The apparatus has at least two operation modes Mand Madapted for abnormality. In mode Mthe processing module that processed the abnormal substrate in the developing unit blocks is identified, and subsequent substrates are transported to the processing module or modules, of the same type as the identified processing module, other than the identified processing module. In mode Mthe developing unit block that processed the abnormal substrate is identified, and subsequent substrates are transported to the developing unit block other than the identified developing unit block.