| Semiconductor industry revenues are expected to top ;CMP has its roots in the ancient art of glass polishing [2] and is employed in modern industrial settings to produce smooth, planar surfaces. More specifically, Integrated Circuit (IC) manufacturers utilize CMP to produce the planar surfaces required by their designs. The CMP process, through the synergistic combination of chemistry (the polishing slurry) and mechanical action (the polishing pad) produces the requisite surface planarity on both a local and global scale.;Since its adoption by IC manufacturers in the 1980's, a significant body of empirical, industrially specific knowledge has been amassed. However as IC technology continues to shrink, from the current 45nm node to the 35nm node and beyond, it will become increasingly important to have more fundamental knowledge of the process and mechanisms that obtain in CMP. To this end, we present three synchronous fundamental data sets, taken over a broad range of industrially relevant conditions: (1) Coefficient of Friction (CoF); (2) Wafer Attitude; (3) Material Removal Rate (MRR), CoF and wafer attitude are measured synchronously and in situ, MRR is measured ex situ.;Analysis of the data reveals a number of interesting features: (1) The wafer, in general, displays a nose up orientation, with average pitch angles on the order of 0.20 degrees. However, excursions to nose down orientation are a regular feature of wafer motion. (2) On the other hand, roll angles are very small, generally less 0.15 degrees. (3) CoF is relatively insensitive to process parameters, the vast majority of results falling between 0.50 and 0.60. (4) MRR is highly dependent on injection location. Removal rates drop from several thousand angstroms per minute to, essentially, zero, with only a change in the slurry injection location. (5) Stick-slip events were associated with local pitch angle minima, although not all local pitch angle minima were associated with stick-slip. (6) CoF exhibits a dependency on platen rotation. (7) Pitch and roll exhibit dependencies on both platen and wafer rotation. |
