a method and apparatus is disclosed for staging or cooling a substrate between high temperature thermal processing steps . in the disclosed embodiment , one or more cooling stations are located off - line within a wafer handling chamber , outside the thermal processing chamber . after thermal processing , a hot wafer can be loaded on to one station , where the wafer is subjected to forced convection cooling . in particular , the wafer is subjected to cooling gas from above and below through perforated upper and lower showerhead assemblies . the wafer can thus be cooled rapidly on a station while other wafers are transferred into and out of the processing chamber . desirably , the wafer is cooled on the station to a point at which it can be handled by a low temperature wafer handler and stored in a low temperature cassette .