Accelerating Process Optimization and Consumable Development for Chemical Mechanical Planarization

Development of cutting-edge microelectronics has strongly emphasized on scaling semi-conductor devices and chemical mechanical polishing (CMP), is an essential technology used for local and global planarization of dielectric interlayers, polishing copper damascene architectures, tungsten vias, low-k dielectric films, and shallow trench isolation. The ever-increasing list of semiconductor devices and scaling demands necessitates a wide range of materials to be polished concurrently or sequentially, which increases the complexity of CMP and presents a continual need to optimize process design and control.

Tribolab CMP is a benchtop chemical mechanical polishing system that reproduces full-scale CMP process; providing a broad range of polishing pressures and rotational speeds, as well as coefficient of friction, acoustic emission and surface temperature data. Several variables can be changed and controlled independently in the experiments including but not limited to; relative velocity, applied downforce, wafer shape, slurry composition and viscosity, conditioning disc type and polishing pad type. Each of these parameters have different effects on the wafer-slurry-pad interactions and the experimental results are used in characterizing wafer/slurry/pad interactions; understanding material removal mechanisms, correlating contact conditions to the process parameters in a systematic way and establishing models that relate material removal rate and friction coefficient to the process parameters. Tribolab CMP is an effective tool utilized to resolve challenges faced in the development of consumables such as pad, slurry, cleaning solutions and provides insight into applications of development and future potential directions.