Patent ID: 8449945

Claim:
A coating method, which uses a coating apparatus including a rotatable tray rotatable about a vertically extending axis, having a recessed portion for accommodating a substrate and rotatable together with the substrate, a nozzle for supplying a coating liquid, and an applicator for spreading the coating liquid, wherein the recessed portion has a depth which is substantially the same as a thickness of the substrate so that an upper surface of a substrate and an upper surface of the tray will be in the same plane when the substrate is accommodated into the recessed portion and the recessed portion has a similar shape to the substrate, the method comprising the steps of: placing a substrate into the recessed portion of the tray; positioning the nozzle over a non-recessed portion of the upper surface of the tray at an upstream side of the substrate with respect to the moving direction of the applicator as a reference; supplying a coating liquid from the nozzle so as to form a coating liquid pool only on the non-recessed portion of the upper surface of the tray at the upstream side of the substrate with respect to the moving direction of the applicator, the coating liquid pool having an arc shape or linear shape, and having a volume sufficient to form a layer of coating liquid over the entire upper surface of the substrate at a uniform thickness; after the coating liquid pool is fully formed on the non-recessed portion of the upper surface of the tray, moving the applicator in a horizontal direction in a state of maintaining a certain distance with respect to the upper surface of the substrate accommodated into the recessed portion and spreading the coating liquid of the coating liquid pool over the entire upper surface of the substrate to form the coating liquid layer having the uniform thickness; and releasing the substrate from the recessed portion of the tray.