Vacuum processing apparatus

A vacuum processing apparatus, comprising:

• an atmosphere transport chamber;
• at least one vacuum transport chamber which is disposed at a back surface side of the atmosphere transport chamber, in which a vacuum transport robot is disposed for transporting a wafer;
• a vacuum processing chamber connected to the vacuum transport chamber, in which the wafer is processed;
• at least one lock chamber capable of storing the wafer therein, disposed between the atmosphere transport chamber the back surface side and the vacuum transport chamber;
• a controller for adjusting transport operations of taking out multiple wafers stored in a cassette disposed to a front surface side of the atmosphere transport chamber from the cassette, allowing the vacuum transport robot to sequentially transport the wafers to the vacuum processing chamber for processing the wafers, and returning the processed wafers to the cassette;
• a pusher arm disposed in the at least one lock chamber for receiving the wafer from the vacuum transport robot to support the wafer on a beam portion, or deliver the supported wafer;
• and
• a cooling plate disposed in a bottom portion of the at least one lock chamber for cooling the wafer which has been delivered from the beam portion of the pusher arm and placed on tip ends of multiple support pins, wherein
• the pusher arm includes four pusher pins disposed at four positions, respectively around a center of the wafer to be placed on the horizontally extending beam portion, and a drive unit connected to a proximal part for vertically moving the beam portion,
• the cooling plate includes a recess portion in its center, into which the beam portion of the pusher arm which has been moved downward is stored, and
• the support pins are positioned closer to an outer circumference side of the wafer on the cooling plate with respect to the center than the pusher pins of the pusher arm.