• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.47-48
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• 2007

A CMP Process has many factors that affect result of a polished wafer. Dominant factors are velocity, pressure and temperature in process. A pad profile is also considered as affecting factor of CMP. Accoding to variation of a pad profile, the each pan of a wafer is differently pressured. It appears to affect the uniformity of a wafer. A pad profile varies as a swing arm conditioner which have been ordinarily used in industry. A swing arm conditioner has several sectors in its swing path. This study aims that a wafer get a good uniformity as swing arm conditioner's path on pad is analyzed and simulated. Through the simulation, tendency of pad profile after conditioning will be predicted and the result of simulation compared with the result of experiment. The optimized pad profile would be made by to vary swing arm's velocity on each sector. In order to maintain the optimized profile, conditioner design or swing arm's velocity should be changed and designed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.359-361
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• 2006

As circuits become increasingly complex and devices sizes shrinks, the demands placed on global planarization of higher level. Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) is an indispensable manufacturing process used to achieve global planarity. In the CMP process, Diamond Disk (DD) plays an important role in the maintenance of removal rate. According to studies, the cause of removal rate decrease in the early or end stage of diamond disk lifetime comes from pad surface change. We also presented pad cutting rate (PCR) as a useful cutting ability index of DD and studied PCR trend about variable parameters that including size, hardness, shape of DD and RPM, pressure of conditioner It has been shown that PCR control ability of pressure and shape is superior to RPM and size. High pressure leads to a decrease of cell open ratio of pad surface because polyurethane of pad is destroyed by pressure. So low pressure high RPM condition is a proper removal rate sustain. By examining correlations between RPM and pressure of conditioner, it has been shown that PCR safe zoneto satisfy proper removal rate has the range 0.06mm/hr to 0.12mm/hr.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2022

Chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) process is a semiconductor process that planarizes a wafer surface using mechanical friction between a polishing pad and a substrate surface during a specific chemical reaction. During the CMP process, polishing pad conditioning is applied to prevent the rapid degradation of the polishing quality caused by polishing pad glazing through repeated material removal processes. However, during the conditioning process, uneven wear on the polishing pad is inevitable because the disk on which diamond particles are electrodeposited is used. Therefore, the abrasion of the polishing pad should be considered not only for the variables during the conditioning process but also when designing the CMP conditioning system. In this study, three design variables of the conditioning system were analyzed, and the effect on the pad wear profile during conditioning was investigated. The three design variables considered in this study were the length of the conditioner arm, diameter of the conditioner disk, and distance between centers. The Taguchi method was used for the experimental design. The effect of the three design variables on pad wear and uniformity was assessed, and new variables used in conditioning system design were proposed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2000.05a
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• pp.854-857
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• 2000

Chemical Mechanical Polishing(CMP) has been accepted as one of the essential processes for VLSI fabrication. However, as the polishing process continues, pad pores get to be glazed by polishing residues, which hinder the supply of new slurry. This defect makes removal rate decrease with a number of polished wafer and the desired within-chip planarity, within wafer and wafer-to-wafer nonuniformity are unable to be achieved. So, pad conditioning is essential to overcome this defect. The eletroplated diamond grit disk is used as the conventional conditioner, And alumina long fiber, the .jet power of high pressure deionized water and vacuum compression are under investigation. But, these methods have the defects like scratches on wafer surface by out of diamond grits, subsidences of pad pores by over-conditioning, and the limits of conditioning effect. To improve these conditioning methods. this paper presents the Characteristics of Ultrasonic conditioning aided by cavitation.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.152-161
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• 2022

Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) is a technology that planarizes the surfaces of semiconductor devices using chemical reaction and mechanical material removal, and it is an essential process in manufacturing highly integrated semiconductors. In the CMP process, a conditioning process using a diamond conditioner is applied to remove by-products generated during processing and ensure the surface roughness of the CMP pad. In previous studies, prediction of pad wear by CMP conditioning has depended on numerical analysis studies based on mathematical simulation. In this study, using an artificial neural network, the ratio of conditioner coverage to the distance between centers in the conditioning system is input, and the average conditioning density, standard deviation, nonuniformity (NU), and conditioning density distribution are trained as targets. The result of training seems to predict the target data well, although the average conditioning density, standard deviation, and NU in the contact area of wafer and pad and all areas of the pad have some errors. In addition, in the case of NU, the prediction calculated from the training results of the average conditioning density and standard deviation can reduce the error of training compared with the results predicted through training. The results of training on the conditioning density profile generally follow the target data well, confirming that the shape of the conditioning density profile can be predicted.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.8.2-8.2
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• 2007

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.51-54
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• 2006

본 연구는 CMP 공정 중의 Conditioning 최적화에 관한 내용이다. CMP Pad Conditioner의 역할은 CMP 공정 중 Slurry 및 연마 잔유물에 의해 Pad 표면에 눈막힘 현상(Glazing)이 발생하여 Wafer의 연마속도가 급속히 저하되는 현상을 방지하여 공정의 안정성을 향상시키는 데 있다. 본 연구 중 Conditioning은 In-situ 방식으로 진행되었으며, Conditioning 비율을 Polishing Time 대비 50%만 진행하여도 연마속도 저하현상은 나타나지 않음을 확인하였다. 이로써 Pad 마모랑 감소 및 Conditioner 교체 주기연장이 가능해져, CMP 공정의 Cost를 절감할 수 있다.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.330-336
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• 2019

Conditioning is a process involving pad surface scraping by a moving metallic disk that is electrodeposited with diamond abrasives. It is an indispensable process in chemical-mechanical planarization, which regulates the pad roughness by removing the surface residues. Additionally, conditioning maintains the material removal rates and increases the pad lifetime. As the conditioning continues, the pad profile becomes unevenly to be deformed, which causes poor polishing quality. Simulation calculates the density at which the diamond abrasives on the conditioner scratch the unit area on the pad. It can predict the profile deformation through the control of conditioner dwell time. Previously, this effect of the diamond shape on conditioning has been investigated with regard to microscopic areas, such as surface roughness, rather than global pad-profile deformation. In this study, the effect of diamond shape on the pad profile is evaluated by comparing the simulated and experimental conditioning using two conditioners: a) random-shaped abrasive conditioner (RSC) and b) uniform-shaped abrasive conditioner (USC). Consequently, it is confirmed that the USC is incapable of controlling the pad profile, which is consistent with the simulation results.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.19.2-19.2
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• 2006