Patent ID: 7678417

Claim:
A coating method which uses a coating apparatus comprising a coating section having a stage module, a temperature regulating module which adjusts a temperature of a substrate to a set temperature, a coating module which applies a coating liquid to the temperature-regulated substrate, and a heating module which heats the coating-liquid applied substrate, arranged in order from an upstream end of transfer along a transfer path of the substrate; and a substrate transfer mechanism which has an upper arm and a lower arm, provided one on the other and advanceable and retreatable independently of each other, and operates to transfer the substrate downstream from an upstream side along the transfer path of the substrate, the coating method comprising: receiving a substrate on the stage module with one of the upper arm and the lower arm; receiving a substrate placed on a next module with the other one of the upper arm and the lower arm; further transferring the substrate on the one of the arms to said next module; and alternately operating the upper arm and the lower arm in this manner to transfer substrates from an upstream module to a downstream module one by one, wherein a dummy stage is placed between the coating module and the heating module so as to make that arm which performs transfer from the temperature regulating module to the coating module differ from that arm which receives a substrate from the heating module, and numbers are sequentially assigned to downstream modules with the stage module at the upstream end taken as a first module, that substrate which is located on the first stage module is received with the upper arm when the temperature regulating module is an even-numbered module, and the substrate located on the first stage module is received with the lower arm when the temperature regulating module is an odd-numbered module, so that substrate transfer from the temperature regulating module to the coating module is always carried out with the lower arm.