Patent ID: 8278163

Claim:
A semiconductor processing apparatus comprising: a stage configured to receive mounted thereon a substrate having a semiconductor film to be processed is; a supply section that includes at least (a) a beam shaper that shapes a laser beam into a top-hat laser beam with a top-hat beam profile and (b) a diffraction grating that modulates the top-hat type laser beam into a plurality of energy beams in which adjacent energy beams have a tangent line therebetween, the supply section being configured to supply the plurality of energy beams onto the semiconductor film mounted on the stage in such a way that irradiation points of the energy beams are linearly aligned on the semiconductor film at given intervals; and a control section that (a) moves the plurality of energy beams and the substrate relative to each other in a scan direction that is tilted at an angle relative to the linear alignment of the irradiation points on the semiconductor film, and (b) affects scanning of the semiconductor film with the irradiation points of the plurality of energy beams in parallel to thereby control a heat treatment on the semiconductor film, wherein, the tangent line is tangential to both footprints of the adjacent energy beams, the angle between the linear alignment of energy beams and the scan direction is set such that the scan direction is parallel to the tangent line, the angle is such that there is no gap between the footprints of the adjacent energy beams along a direction perpendicular to the scan direction, and the semiconductor processing apparatus being effective to form crescent-shaped crystal grains on the semiconductor film that are aligned along the tangent line.