Patent ID: 7491662

Claim:
A substrate processing apparatus that continuously processes a plurality of substrates, the substrate processing apparatus comprising: a conveyor chamber constituting a substrate convey space; a plurality of process chambers that carry out substrate processing, said process chambers being disposed so as to adjoin a periphery of said conveyor chamber, wherein said conveyor chamber is centrally disposed relative to said process chambers; a substrate convey apparatus provided in said conveyor chamber having a function of conveying substrates; and a control section that controls convey processing of substrates by the substrate convey apparatus so that, in a case in which after a substrate is continuously processed by two or more process chambers, the substrate is re-conveyed from the last process chamber to any of the two or more process chambers other than the last and return processing is implemented, and in the re-conveyance the substrate is conveyed to said any of the process chambers after being temporarily retracted to a place other than a process chamber, wherein the place to which the substrate is retracted is adapted to accommodate a number of substrates, with the number of substrates being equal to the number of substrates that can be processed at one time by all of said process chambers, and wherein, in a case in which the substrate process time in each of said two or more process chambers is equal, taking n as the number of process chambers subject to return processing and T as substrate convey time between processing chambers, the retraction time used by the control section is {(n−1)·T}.