Importance

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Abstract

Chambers each include an inlet port for supplying N.sub.2 gas and an outlet port for discharging an inner atmosphere, and therefore the chambers have different amounts of supply of N.sub.2 gas in a unit of time and different amounts of discharge of inner atmosphere in a unit of time. With this structure, the first to fourth processing chambers are controlled to have the lowest inner pressure(p3), a transfer module is controlled to have an inner pressure (p2) higher than the inner pressure (p3) and a loader and an unloader are controlled to have the highest inner pressure (p1). That eliminates the necessity for keeping the whole substrate processing apparatus at the highest inner pressure (p1) and supplying a large amount of N.sub.2 gas, and therefore it is possible to achieve processings of substrate at lower cost, with shorter purge time and less contamination of substrate.

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First Claim