A coating and developing system is capable of preventing the contamination
of a substrate with particles while the same coats a surface of a
substrate with a resist film and develops the resist film after the
substrate has been processed by immersion exposure. The coating and
developing system includes: a processing block including coating units
for forming a resist film on a surface of a substrate and developing
units for processing the resist film formed on the substrate with a
developer, and an interface block connected to the processing block and
an exposure system for carrying out an immersion exposure process. The
interface block includes: substrate cleaning units for cleaning the
substrate processed by the immersion exposure process, a first carrying
mechanism and a second carrying mechanism. The first carrying mechanism
carries a substrate processed by immersion exposure to the substrate
cleaning unit. The second carrying mechanism carries the substrate
cleaned by the substrate cleaning unit. Thus the contamination of the
substrate with external particles can be prevented and hence the spread
of contamination with particles over the processing units of the
processing block and substrates processed by the processing units can be
prevented.