Substrate processing apparatus, method for processing substrate, and storage medium

Abstract

Processing gas is supplied from the central upper part of a processing chamber to a wafer on a mounting board, while the processing chamber is exhausted from processing gas exhaust passages at areas outside of the wafer. In addition, purge gas is supplied from purge gas supply passages to a buffer chamber formed between the peripheral part or a container main body and that of a cover body. The supplied flow-rate of the processing gas is made less than the exhaust flow-rate in the processing gas exhaust passages. Accordingly, the purge gas in the buffer chamber is drawn into the processing chamber via a purge gas supply hole formed of a gap between the container main body and the cover body due to a negative pressure inside the processing chamber caused by a difference between the flow rates.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]1. Field of the Invention[0002]The present invention relates to a technique for performing predetermined substrate processing such as hydrophobic processing on a semiconductor device, a LCD (liquid crystal display) substrate, etc.[0003]2. Description of the Related Art[0004]As one of a series of steps for forming a resist pattern in a manufacturing process for a semiconductor device, a LCD substrate, etc., hydrophobic processing is performed on a substrate such as a semiconductor wafer (hereinafter referred to as a “wafer”) W. This processing is performed to enhance the adhesion between a substrate film and a resist film before a resist liquid is applied to the wafer W. In this processing, HMDS (hexamethyl disilazane) vapor is sprayed onto the front surface of the wafer W to form a thin film thereon so that the front surface property of the wafer W is changed from hydrophilicity to hydrophobicity. In this case, the hydrophobic processing is preferabl...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015]The present invention has been made in light of the above circumstances and may prevent the leakage of gas from a processing chamber without hermetically sealing the processing chamber to reduce the spreading of the gas to the rear surface of a substrate.

[0020]According to an embodiment of the present invention, the supplied flow-rate of the processing gas into the processing chamber is made less than the exhaust flow-rate in the processing gas exhaust passage. Due to the negative pressure inside the processing chamber caused by the difference between the flow rates, purge gas is drawn into the processing chamber from the gap formed at the peripheral part of the processing chamber, thereby preventing the leakage of gas from the processing chamber. Furthermore, because the pressure inside the processing chamber is prevented from being negative due to the drawing of the purge gas into the processing chamber, the spreading of gas to the rear surface of a substrate is reduced.

Problems solved by technology

However, if the HMDS gas largely spreads to the rear surface of the wafer W and the hydrophobic processing is performed thereon, the following problem arises.

This results in an increase in the number of components of the hydrophobic processing apparatus and makes its structure complicated.

Therefore, the assembling operation of the apparatus is a lot of trouble.

In addition, the complicated structure easily causes an error in assembling the apparatus, which requires an operation for adjusting the error and an inspection process and a management process to determine the presence or absence of error in assembling the apparatus.

As a result, this increases the burden on an operator.

Under this configuration, however, the degree of intensity in blowing the gas is different depending on an area, which easily causes air turbulence and generates a turbulent flow between the wafer W and the cover body 12.

This results in hindering the quick dispersion of the gas.

Therefore, the substitution of the HMDS gas for the N2 gas hardly advances, and thus the substitution processing takes much time.

However, these techniques are not intended to perform the hydrophobic processing without hermetically sealing the processing chamber and thus do not solve the above problems.Patent Document 1: JP-A-11-214292Patent Document 2: JP-A-10-135125

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