Patent ID: 7897897

Claim:
A temperature setting method of a thermal processing plate when mounting and thermally processing a substrate thereon, said method comprising the steps of: dividing the thermal processing plate into a plurality of regions within a thermal processing chamber; setting a temperature for each of the regions with a controllable heater; and adjusting an in-plane temperature of the thermal processing plate by setting a temperature correction value for each of the regions, said adjusting step comprising the steps of: measuring line widths of a resist pattern of the substrate for a substrate which has been subjected to a series of substrate processing including thermal processing said line widths being defined along a thickness direction of the substrate; and subtracting an improvement component improved by change of the temperature correction values for the regions of the thermal processing plate from the measured line widths of the substrate to calculate line widths of the substrate after the change of the temperature correction values for the thermal processing plate, wherein said improvement component is found by an expression, Za=− 1×α× F ( T ) where Za: an improvement component, α: a conversion coefficient between temperature variation amounts within the substrate and the line widths of the substrate, F(T): a function of the temperature correction values for the regions of the thermal processing plate and the temperature variation amounts within the substrate, and T: temperature correction values for the regions of the thermal processing plate.