A Study on DOE Method to Optimize the Process Parameters for Cu CMP

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) has been widely accepted for the global planarization of multi-layer structures in semiconductor manufacturing. Copper has been the candidate metallization material for ultra-large scale integrated circuits (ULSIs), owing to its excellent electro-migration resistance and low electrical resistance. However, it still has various problems in copper CMP process. Thus, it is important to understand the effect of the process variables such as turntable speed, head speed, down force and back pressure are very important parameters that must be carefully formulated in order to achieve desired the removal rates and non-uniformity. Using a design of experiment (DOE) approach, this study was performed investigating the main effect of the variables and the interaction between the various parameters during CMP. A better understanding of the interaction behavior between the various parameters and the effect on removal rate, non-uniformity and ETC (edge to center) is achieved by using the statistical analysis techniques. In the experimental tests, the optimum parameters which were derived from the statistical analysis could be found for higher removal rate and lower non-uniformity through the above DOE results.

구리 CMP 공정변수 최적화를 위한 실험계획법(DOE) 연구