Patent ID: 7050710

Claim:
A heat treatment apparatus for performing heat treatment on a wafer having a surface on which a coating film is formed, comprising: a chamber for housing the wafer, including a fixed upper vessel and a vertically movable lower vessel; a supporting pin fixed to said lower vessel and holding said wafer substantially horizontally; a hot plate disposed above the wafer held by said supporting pin in said chamber so that the coating film formed on said wafer can be directly heated; an exhaust port provided in said upper vessel of said chamber and exhausting gas in said chamber, and a wafer transferring member configured to support said wafer and provided to penetrate a bottom wall of said lower vessel so as to pass the supported wafer to said supporting pin when said lower vessel is lifted and so as to receive the wafer from said supporting pin when said lower vessel is lowered; wherein a gap having a predetermined width is provided between an end face of said hot plate and an inner wall face of said chamber, the gas in said chamber is exhausted from said exhaust port, thereby holding the inside of said chamber in a predetermined pressure-reduced atmosphere, and gas generated from said coating film when said coating film is heated by said hot plate passes through said gap and is exhausted to the outside of said chamber.