• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.203-207
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• 2008

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) allows the planarization of wafers with two or more materials. There are many elements such as slurry, polishing pad, process parameters and conditioning in CMP process. Especially, polishing pad is considered as one of the most important consumables because this affects its performances such as WIWNU(within wafer non-uniformity) and MRR(material removal rate). In polishing pad, grooves and pores on its surface affect distribution of slurry, flow and profile of MRR on wafer. A subject of this investigation is to apply CMP for planarization of shallow trench isolation structure using microstructure(MS) pad. MS pad is designed to have uniform structure on its surface and manufactured by micro-molding technology. And then STI CMP performances such as pattern selectivity, erosion and comer rounding are evaluated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.374-375
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• 2006

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the propriety of biodegradable polymer pad in spite of exchanging from existing polyurethane pad used in CMP(Chemical Mechanical Planarization). Poli 400 of G&P Technology for CMP and Ellipsometer of Rudolph AutoEL-III for measurement were used in this experiment. From this experiment, it is proven that the biodegradable polymer pad is sufficiently suitable in CMP process. Therefore, it is expected that, by using the biodegrable pad CMP manufacturing process, and will be decreased. Especially, wafer scratch can be decreased.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.1027-1033
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• 2007

In this research, the polishing pad for W CMP has been analyzed to understand stabilization of polishing performance. For stabilization of process, the polishing pad condition is one of important factors. The polishing pad plays a key role in polishing process, because it contact with reacted surface of wafer[1]. The physical property of pad surface is ruled by conditioning tool which makes roughness and profile of pad surface. Pad surface affects on polishing performance such as RR(Removal Rate) and uniformity in CMP. The stabilized pad surface has stable roughness. And its surface has high level of wettability which can increase the probability of abrasive adhesion on pad. The result of this research is that the reduction of break-in and dummy polishing process were achieved by artificial machining to make stable pad surface. In this research, urethane polishing pad which is named IC pad(Nitta-Haas Inc.) and has micro pore structure, is studied. Because, this type of pad is the most conventional type.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.362-365
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• 2005

Currently Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) has become an essential step in the overall semiconductor wafer fabrication technology. Especially the CMP pad conditioner, one of the diamond tools, is required to have strong diamond retention. Strong cohesion between diamond grits and metal matrix prevents macro scratch on the wafer. If diamond retention is weak, the diamond will be pulled out of metal matrix. The pulled diamond grits are causative of macro scratch on wafer during CMP process. Firstly, some results will be reported of cohesion between diamond grits and metal matrix on the diamond tools prepared by three different manufacturing methods. A measuring instrument with sharp cemented carbide connected with a push-pull gauge was manufactured to measure the cohesion between diamond grits and metal matrix. The retention force of brazed diamond tool was stronger than the others. The retention force was also increased in proportion to the contact area of diamond grits and metal matrix. The brazed diamond tool has a strong chemical combination of the interlayer composed of chrome in metal matrix and carbon which enhance the interfacial cohesion strength between diamond grits and metal matrix. Secondly, we measured real-time data of the coefficient of friction and the pad wear rate by using CMP tester (CETR, CP-4). CMP pad conditioner samples were manufactured by brazed, electro-plated and sintered methods. The coefficient of friction and the pad wear rate were shown differently according to the arranged diamond patterns. Consequently, the coefficient of friction is increased according as the space between diamonds is increased or the concentration of diamonds is decreased. The pad wear rate is increased according as the degree of diamond protrusion is increased.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.309-313
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• 2006

Pad surface characteristics such as roughness, groove and wear rate of pad have a effect on the within wafer non-uniformity(WIWNU) in chemical mechanical polishing(CMP). Although WIWNU increases as the uniformity of roughness(Rpk: Reduced peak height) becomes worse in an early stage of polishing time, WIWNU decreases as non-uniformity of the Rpk value. Also, WIWNU decreases with the reduction of the pad stiffness, though original mechanical properties of pad are unchanged by the grooving process. In addition, conditioning process causes the inequality of pad wear during in CMP. The profile of pad wear generated by the conditioning process has a significant effect on the WIWNU. These experiments results could help to understand the effect of pad surface characteristics in CMP.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.1296-1301
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• 2003

The chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) is necessarily applied to manufacturing the dielectric layer and metal line in the semiconductor device. The conditioning of polishing pad in CMP process additionally operates for maintaining the removal rate, within wafer non-uniformity, and wafer to wafer non-uniformity. But the fixed abrasive pad(FAP) using the hydrophilic polymer with abrasive that has the swelling characteristic by water owns the self-conditioning advantage as compared with the general CMP. FAP also takes advantage of planarity, resulting from decreasing pattern selectivity and defects such as dishing due to the reduction of abrasive concentration. This paper introduces the manufacturing technique of FAP. And the tungsten CMP using FAP achieved the good conclusion in point of the removal rate, non-uniformity, surface roughness, material selectivity, micro-scratch free contemporary with the pad life-time.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.481-482
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• 2006

Chemical-mechanical polishing, the dominant technology for LSI planarization, is trending to play an important function in micro-electro mechanical systems (MEMS). However, MEMS CMP process has a couple of different characteristics in comparison to LSI device CMP since the feature size of MEMS is bigger than that of LSI devices. Preliminary CMP tests are performed to understand material removal rate (MRR) with blanket wafer under a couple of polishing pressure and velocity. Based on the blanket CMP data, this paper focuses on the consumable approach to enhance MEMS CMP by the adjustment of slurry and pad. As a mechanical tool, newly developed microstructured (MS) pad is applied to compare with conventional pad (IC 1400-k Nitta-Haas), which is fabricated by micro melding method of polyurethane. To understand the CMP characteristics in real time, in-situ friction force monitoring system was used. Finally, the topography change of poly-si MEMS structures is compared according to the pattern density, size and shape as polishing time goes on.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.17-24
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• 2003

Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) has been applied for planarization of topography after patterning process in semiconductor fabrication process. Tungsten CMP is necessary to build up interconnects of semiconductor device. But the tungsten dishing and the oxide erosion defects appear at end-point during tungsten CMP. It has been known that the generation of dishing and erosion is based on the over-polishing time, which is determined by pattern selectivity. Fixed abrasive pad takes advantage of decreasing the defects resulting flam reducing pattern selectivity because of the lower abrasive concentration. The manufacturing technique of fixed abrasive pad using hydrophilic polymers is introduced in this paper. For application to tungsten CMP, chemicals composed of oxidizer, catalyst, and acid were developed. In comparison of the general pad and slurry for tungsten CMP, the fixed abrasive pad and the chemicals resulted in appropriate performance in point of removal rate, uniformity, material selectivity and roughness.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.50 no.9
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• pp.438-443
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• 2001

In the shallow trench isolation(STI)-chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process, the key issues are the optimized thickness control, within-wafer-non-uniformity, and the possible defects such as pad oxide damage and nitride residue. The defect like nitride residue and silicon (or pad oxide) damage after STI-CMP process were discussed to accomplish its optimum process condition. To understand its optimum process condition, overall STI related processes including reverse moat etch, trench etch, STI fill and STI-CMP were discussed. Consequently, we could conclude that law trench depth and high CMP thickness can cause nitride residue, and high trench depth and over-polishing can cause silicon damage.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.23 no.6_2
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• pp.1051-1058
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• 2020

The chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) is a process of physically and chemically polishing the semiconductor substrate. The planarization quality of a substrate can be evaluated by the within wafer non-uniformity (WIWNU). In order to improve WIWNU, it is important to manage the pad profile. In this study, a device capable of non-contact measurement of the pad thickness profile was developed. From the measured pad profile, the profile of the pad surface and the groove was extracted using the envelope function, and the pad thickness profile was derived using the difference between each profile. Thickness profiles of various CMP pads were measured using the developed PMS and envelope function. In the case of IC series pads, regardless of the pad wear amount, the envelopes closely follow the pad surface and grooves, making it easy to calculate the pad thickness profile. In the case of the H80 series pad, the pad thickness profile was easy to derive because the pad with a small wear amount did not reveal deep pores on the pad surface. However, the pad with a large wear amount make errors in the lower envelope profile, because there are pores deeper than the grooves. By removing these deep pores through filtering, the pad flatness could be clearly confirmed. Through the developed PMS and the pad thickness profile calculation method using the envelope function, the pad life, the amount of wear and the pad flatness can be easily derived and used for various pad analysis.