Patent ID: 7981217

Claim:
A vertical heat treatment apparatus comprising: a thermal reactor which has a reactor opening at a bottom thereof; a cover which hermetically closes the reactor opening; a holder which is positioned above the cover to hold a large number of to-be-processed substrates via a ring-shaped support plate in such a manner as to arrange the substrates vertically at predetermined intervals; an elevator mechanism which moves the cover up and down to load the holder into and unload the holder from the thermal reactor; a storage container which is positioned outside the thermal reactor to store a plurality of to-be-processed substrates at predetermined intervals; and a transfer mechanism which has a plurality of transfer plates that are arranged at predetermined intervals to carry to-be-processed substrates thereon, the transfer mechanism transferring the to-be-processed substrates between the storage container and the holder; wherein the support plate for the holder is divided into an outer support plate and an inner support plate which are formed separately from each other, the outer support plate being formed substantially C-shaped having a cutout section through which the transfer plates can vertically pass to transfer the to-be-processed substrates, the inner support plate being placed at the inner periphery of the outer support plate and provided with a block section for blocking up the cutout section.