Patent ID: 8230806

Claim:
A heat treatment apparatus comprising: a substrate holder for holding a plurality of substrates arranged at predetermined vertical intervals; a heat treating furnace for receiving the substrate holder and allowing a predetermined heat treatment to be performed on the substrates therein, wherein the substrate holder has a plurality of substrate holding sections for holding end portions of the substrates under the condition that a substrate having a front surface facing upward and a substrate having a back surface facing upward are alternately arranged in a vertical direction, the substrate holding sections are arranged such that a first distance between one of a first pair of substrates that are vertically adjacent each other and have respective front surfaces facing each other and the other of the first pair of substrates is set to ensure uniformity of the treatment and larger than a second distance between one of a second pair of substrates that are vertically adjacent each other and have respective back surfaces facing each other and the other of the second pair of substrates, the substrate holder is composed of two holder constituting bodies, each of the holder constituting bodies having a plurality of columns each including a plurality of substrate holding sections, the substrate holding sections of each of the holder constituting bodies being arranged at a predetermined vertical interval and adapted to hold circumferential portions of the substrates, the columns being arranged on the circumference of a same imaginary circle, one of the holder constituting bodies holds the substrates under the condition that the front surfaces of the substrates face upward, the other of the holder constituting bodies holds the substrates under the condition that the back surfaces of the substrates face upward, and the two holder constituting bodies are combined such that the substrate with the front surface facing upward and the substrate with the back surface facing upward are alternately arranged in the vertical direction, and at least one of the two holder constituting bodies is capable of moving up and down by a vertical movement mechanism to change the positions of the two holder constituting bodies relative to each other in order to ensure that the first distance is set to ensure the uniformity of the treatment and to be larger than the second distance; and a pivoting mechanism for pivoting at least one of the two holder constituting bodies in the circumferential direction to change the positions of the two holder constituting bodies relative to each other in order to ensure that the columns of the holder constituting bodies surround the circumferential portions of the substrates under the condition that a distance between any two of the columns is smaller than the diameters of the substrates.