PURPOSE: To avoid the collapse of a formed pattern due to resist foaming by a method wherein a coated resist is cooled down and then exposed to be gradually heated for suppressing the degassing of the fine pattern when resist is exposed.

CONSTITUTION: A wafer 1 spin-coated with a photoresist is pre-baked by a hot plate, etc., to evaporate a solvent for the formation of a resist layer. Next, the wafer 1 is mounted on a wafer chuck 2 of an exposure device to be gradually cooled down from the room temperature state to the temperature not exceeding 0°C by a temperature controller 3 e.g. at -20°C for later exposure processing. After finishing the exposure step, the wafer 1 is gradually heated to be restored to the room temperature state from the cooled down state. When the temperature of the wafer 1 is restored to the room temperature, the wafer 1 is unloaded from the wafer chuck 2 to start the next development step. Through these procedures, the rapid voluminal expansion of the gas produced by the photodecomposition in the exposure time can be suppressed.