Patent ID: 7445446

Claim:
A method of heat-treating resist coated manufacturing wafers in a processing system, the method comprising: establishing a temperature profile for each of a plurality of hotplates in the processing system; heat-treating the resist coated manufacturing wafers in parallel on the plurality of hotplates; obtaining CD metrology data from test areas on the heat-treated resist coated manufacturing wafers; determining CD variations for each of the plurality of hotplates from the CD metrology data; adjusting the temperature profile of one or more of the plurality of hotplates after determining the CD variations; and heat-treating additional resist coated manufacturing wafers in parallel on the plurality of hotplates after the adjusting, wherein the determining comprises comparing the CD metrology data for each of the plurality of hotplates to a CD metrology fault value, and the adjusting comprises adjusting the temperature profile of the one or more hotplates that exceed the CD metrology fault value.