PURPOSE: To enable wafers to be efficiently transferred between vacuum treatment chambers and a load lock chamber and taken in or out of them so as to enhance a vacuum treatment device in throughput.

CONSTITUTION: A vacuum treatment device is of multi-chambered structure, where a transfer chamber surrounded with vacuum treatment chambers 4a to 4d and a load lock chamber 3 is divided into an upper and a lower transfer chamber, 1a and 1b, and substrate handling arms 7a and 7b, which are made to turn as indexed out to the positions of the vacuum treatment chambers respectively and to take wafers 6 in or out of the vacuum treatment chambers extending or shrinking, are provided to the transfer chambers 1a and 1b. The handling arms 7a and 7b are made to operate in an idle time produced due to the inequality of the vacuum treatment chambers 4a to 4d in treatment time to smoothly take wafers 6 in or out of the vacuum treatment chambers 4a to 4d from or to the load lock chamber 3 and to efficiently transfer the wafers 6 between the vacuum treatment chambers 4a to 4d.