Patent ID: 8532818

Claim:
A vacuum processing apparatus comprising: a vacuum vessel arranged at a backward side, where a wafer is processed in a processing chamber disposed inside said vacuum vessel; a transfer chamber arranged at a forward side, where said wafer is transferred inside thereof under atmospheric pressure; a cassette stage arranged in front of said transfer chamber, on the cassette stage a cassette which stores said wafer therein being mounted; a lock chamber communicating with said transfer chamber at the backward side of said transfer chamber, said lock chamber being arranged between said transfer chamber and said vacuum vessel; a robot which is arranged inside said transfer chamber and transfers said wafer between said cassette and said lock chamber, said robot being equipped with both an arm which can rotate, expand and contract in a given direction, and a hand which can hold said wafer on an upper surface thereof; an aligning unit which makes a position of said wafer fit with a predetermined position, said aligning unit being in communication with said transfer chamber; and a control unit which detects said position of said wafer with respect to said robot using an output of a detector disposed on said hand of said robot, said output being obtained while said wafer is transferred from said cassette to the inside of said transfer chamber by said expansion or contraction of said arm of said robot, wherein said control unit controls transferring of said wafer by said robot so that said wafer is transferred to said lock chamber after alignment of said wafer on said aligning unit, in a case where a displacement amount of position of this wafer from a reference position is larger than a predetermined value, and wherein said control unit controls transferring of said wafer by said robot so that said wafer is transferred to said lock chamber without performing alignment of said wafer on said aligning unit in a case where said displacement amount of position of this wafer is equal to or smaller than the predetermined value.