Patent ID: 7844359

Claim:
A coating and developing apparatus, comprising: a resist-coating module that coats a surface of a substrate with a resist; a protective-film coating module provided at a downstream side relative to the resist-coating module, the protective-film coating module being adapted such that the resist film formed on the surface of the substrate is surface-coated with a chemical for forming a protective film to protect the surface of the substrate; an inspection module provided at a downstream side relative to the protective-film coating module, the inspection module being adapted to inspect a coating state of the chemical in the protective-film coating module; a queuing module provided at a downstream side relative to the inspection module, the queuing module being adapted to queue the substrate; a protective-film removing module provided at a downstream side relative to the queuing module, the protective-film removing module being adapted to remove the protective film from the substrate upon which a light exposure unit has performed liquid-immersion light exposure with a liquid layer formed on the surface of the substrate; a developing module provided at a downstream side relative to the protective-film removing module, the developing module being adapted to develop the substrate by supplying a developing solution to the substrate from which the protective film has been removed; substrate transfer means for sequentially transferring the substrate from an upstream module, towards a downstream module, and between the modules that constitute the apparatus; and a controller connected to each of the modules and to the substrate transfer means, the controller controlling the substrate transfer means in accordance with the coating state of the chemical that has been inspected in the inspection module; wherein: if an abnormal substrate is detected in the inspection module and transferred to the queuing module, the controller controls the queuing module to queue the abnormal substrate, and after a substrate immediately preceding the abnormal substrate in terms of transfer priority level has been unloaded from the exposure unit and loaded into a previously designated module present at an upstream side relative to the protective-film removing module and at a downstream side relative to the exposure unit, the controller controls the substrate transfer means to transfer the abnormal substrate from the queuing module to the designated module; and the controller further controls the substrate transfer means to transfer the immediately preceding substrate and the abnormal substrate towards a downstream side relative to the designated module to subsequently maintain the transfer priority levels of the immediately preceding substrate and the abnormal substrate, and controls the protective-film removing module to remove a protective film from the abnormal substrate in the protective-film removing module.