• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.178-181
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• 2002

We studied the characteristics of polishing pad, which can apply W CMP process for global planarization of multilevel interconnection structure. Also we investigated the effects of different sets of polishing pad. The purpose of this experiment is the cost reduction by the increase of pad life time and decrease of cycle time and slurry usage with new pad. Especially we studied the effect of polishing pad for CMP process by this experiment of polishing pad that is consumables material during CMP process. We expecting the increase of process throughput and improvement of device manufacturing yield because we can choose optimum polishing pad through this result.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.434-437
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• 2005

Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) has become an essential step in the overall semiconductor wafer fabrication technology. In general, CMP is a surface planarization method in which a silicon wafer is rotated against a polishing pad in the presence of slurry under pressure. The polishing pad, generally a polyurethane-based material, consists of polymeric foam cell walls, which aid in removal of the reaction products at the wafer interface. It has been found that the material removal rate of any polishing pad decreases due to the so-called 'pad glazing' after several wafer lots have been processed. Therefore, the pad restoration and conditioning has become essential in CMP processes to keep the urethane polishing pad at the proper friction coefficient and to allow effective slurry transport to the wafer surface. Diamond pad conditioner employs a single layer of brazed bonded diamond crystals. Due to the corrosive nature of the polishing slurry required in low pH metal CMP such as copper, it is essential to minimize the possibility of chemical interaction between very low pH slurry (pH <2) and the bond alloy. In this paper, we report an exceptional protective coated conditioner for in-situ pad conditioning in low pH Cu CMP process. The protective Cr-coated conditioner has been tested in slurry with pH levels as low as 1.5 without bond degradation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2004.07a
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• pp.247-251
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• 2004

Chemical-Mechanical Polishing(CMP) especially is becoming one of the most important ULSI processes for the 0.25m generation and beyond. And there are many elements affecting CMP performance such as slurry, pad, process parameters and pad conditioning. Among these elements the CMP pad is considered one of the most important because of its change. But the surface of the pad has irregular pores, so there is non-uniformity of slurry flow and of contact area between wafer and the pad, and glazing occurs on the surface of the pad. So we make CMP pad with micro structure using micro molding method. This paper introduces the basic concept and fabrication technique of CMP pad with micro-structure and the characteristic of polishing. Experimental results demonstrate the removal rate, uniformity, and time vs. removal rate.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.67-70
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• 2024

Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) is an essential process for ensuring high integration when manufacturing semiconductor devices. CMP mainly requires the use of polyurethane-based polishing pads as an ultraprecise process to achieve mechanical material removal and the required chemical reactions. A diamond disk performs pad conditioning to remove processing residues on the pad surface and maintain sufficient surface roughness during CMP. However, the diamond grits attached to the disk cause uneven wear of the pad, leading to the poor uniformity of material removal during CMP. This study investigates the pad wear rate profile according to the swing motion of the conditioner during swing-arm-type CMP conditioning using deep learning. During conditioning, the motion of the swing arm is independently controlled in eight zones of the same pad radius. The experiment includes six swingmotion conditions to obtain actual data on the pad wear rate profile, and deep learning learns the pad wear rate profile obtained in the experiment. The absolute average error rate between the experimental values and learning results is 0.01%. This finding confirms that the experimental results can be well represented by learning. Pad wear rate profile prediction using the learning results reveals good agreement between the predicted and experimental values.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.385-389
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• 2003

There are four main components of the CMP process: polishing pad, slurry, elastic supporter, and pad conditioner. The polishing pad is an essential component to the reproducibility of polishing uniformity in CMP process. However, the polishing pad in recently using metal CMP raised the several points of high cost caused by the increase of cycle time and the many usage of slurry. It is necessary to develop the novel polishing pad which would lead the cost reduction by the higher pad life-cycle, minimized cycle time and lower slurry usage. The characteristics of polishing pad were studied on the effects of different sets of the Polishing pad, which can be applied to metal chemical mechanical polishing process for global planarization of multilevel interconnection structure. The main purpose of this experiment is cost reduction by the increase of pad life-time, the decrease of cycle time and the lower usage of slurry through the specific hard porous structured pad design. It is confirmed that the novel polishing pad made the slurry usage decrease to 60% as well as the pad life-time increase twice with the 25% improvement of removal rate. The polishing time could be decreased and it also helped the cycle time to diminish. It can be expected that this results will help both the process throughput and the device yield to be improved.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.51 no.7
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• pp.311-315
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• 2002

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process was required for the global planarization of inter-metal dielectric(IMD), inter-level dielectric (ILD) layers of multi-layer interconnections. In this paper, we studied the characteristics of polishing pad, which can apply shallow trench isolation (STI)-CMP process for global planarization of multi-level interconnection structure. Also, we investigated the effects of different sets of polishing pad, such as soft and hard pad. As an experimental result, hard pad showed center-fast type, and soft pad showed edge-fast type. Totally, the defect level has shown little difference, however, the counts of scratch was detected less than 2 on JR111 pad. Through the above results, we can select optimum polishing pad, so we can expect the improvements of throughput and device yield.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.6 no.4 s.21
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• pp.21-28
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• 2003

CMP (Chemical Mechanical Polishing) is to achieve adequate local and global planarization for future sub-micrometer VLSI requirements. In designing CMP, numerical computation is quite helpful in terms of reducing the amount of experimental works. Stresses on pad, concentration of particles and particle tracking are studied for design. In this research, the optimization of grooved pad shape of CMP is performed through numerical investigation of slurry flow in CMP process. The result indicates that the combination of sinusoidal groove and skewed pad is the most optimal shape among the twenty candidates. Useful information can be obtained in velocity, pressure, stress, concentration of particles and particles trajectories, etc.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.297-302
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• 2005

Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) performances can be optimized by several process parameters such as equipment and consumables (pad, backing film and slurry). Pad properties are important in determining removal rate and planarization ability of a CMP process. It is investigated the performance of oxide CMP process using commercial silica slurry after the pad conditioning temperature was varied. Conditioning process with the high temperature made the slurry be unrestricted to flow and be hold, which made the removal rate of oxide film increase. The pad became softer and flexible as the conditioning temperature increases. Then the softer pad provided the better surface planarity of oxide film without defect.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.22-29
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• 2004

As a result of high integration of semiconductor device, the global planarization of multi-layer structures is necessary. So the chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) is widely applied to manufacturing the dielectric layer and metal line in the semiconductor device. CMP process is under influence of polisher, pad, slurry, and process itself, etc. In comparison with the general CMP which uses the slurry including abrasives, fixed abrasive pad takes advantage of planarity, resulting from decreasing pattern selectivity and defects such as dishing & erosion due to the reduction of abrasive concentration especially. This paper introduces the manufacturing technique of fixed abrasive pad using hydrophilic polymers with swelling characteristic in water and explains the self-conditioning phenomenon. And the tungsten CMP using fixed abrasive pad achieved the good conclusion in terms of the removal rate, non-uniformity, surface roughness, material selectivity, micro-scratch free contemporary with the pad life-time.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.32-37
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• 2004

Polishing processes are widely used in the glass, optical, die and semiconductor industries. Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) especially is becoming one of the most important ULSI processes for the 0.25m generation and beyond. CMP is conventionally carried out using abrasive slurry and a polishing pad. But the surface of the pad has irregular pores, so there is non-uniformity of slurry flow and of contact area between wafer and the pad, and glazing occurs on the surface of the pad. This paper introduces the basic concept and fabrication technique of the next generation CMP pad using micro-molding method to obtain uniform protrusions and pores on the pad surface.