A sliding mode control strategy is developed for temperature control of a rapid thermal processing (RTP) system to enhance temperature accuracy and uniformity when heating in this work. Temperature dynamics of the RTP is nonlinear and infinite-dimensional while order of the controller should be finite due to implementation limitations. Developing a nonlinear low-order controller for the system is important if accurate and uniform control of the temperature is required. This work addresses this issue by developing a sliding mode controller based on the dominant modes of the system. The schemes are applied to a RTP system and excellent performances are achieved. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.