Patent ID: 8225738

Claim:
A resist coating apparatus comprising: a substrate holding member that holds a substrate; a rotation mechanism that rotates the substrate holding member at a variable speed; a resist solution nozzle that supplies a resist solution to substantially a center of the substrate held by the substrate holding member; and a control section that controls an operation of the apparatus and includes a computer readable not-transitory storage medium storing a control program, which, when executed, causes the control section to control the apparatus to conduct a resist coating sequence on a circular target substrate held by the substrate holding member, the sequence comprising: supplying the resist solution to substantially a center of the target substrate while rotating the target substrate at a first rotational speed of 2,000 to 6,000 rpm during a supply period, and terminating supply of the resist solution at an end of the supply period such that the resist solution is kept not supplied onto the target substrate thereafter until residual parts of the resist solution have been spun off; rotating the target substrate while reducing a rotational speed thereof from the first rotational speed to a second rotational speed that is lower than the first rotational speed and that is 500 to 2,000 rpm with a deceleration rate of 20,000 to 50,000 rpm/sec during a period from a first time point at the end of the supply period, at which supply of the resist solution is terminated, to a second time point; rotating the target substrate at the second rotational speed during a period of 0.2 to 0.5 seconds from the second time point to a third time point; rotating the target substrate while reducing a rotational speed thereof from the second rotational speed to a third rotational speed that is lower than the second rotational speed and that is 100 to 500 rpm with a deceleration rate of 5,000 to 50,000 rpm/sec during a period from the third time point to a fourth time point, the periods from the first time point to the fourth time point being less than or equal to 1.5 seconds in total; rotating the target substrate at the third rotational speed during a period of 1 to 3 seconds from the fourth time point to a fifth time point to adjust a film thickness of resist solution; and rotating the target substrate while accelerating a rotational speed thereof from the third rotational speed to a fourth rotational speed higher than the third rotational speed during a period from the fifth time point to a sixth time point, and rotating the target substrate at the fourth rotational speed from the sixth time point to spin off residual parts of the resist solution.