• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.46-52
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• 2005

The sapphire wafer was polished by the implementation of the surface machining technology based on nano-tribology, The removal process has been performed by grinding, lapping and chemical-mechanical polishing. For the chemical mechanical polishing process, the chemical reaction between the slurry and sapphire wafer was investigated in terms of the change of Zeta-potential between two materials. The Zeta-potential was -4.98 mV without the slurry in deionized water and was -37.05 mV for the slurry solution. By including the slurry into the deionized water the Zeta-potential -29.73 mV, indicating that the surface atoms of sapphire become more repulsive to be easy to separate. The average roughness of the polished surface of sapphire wafer was ranged to 1∼4$\AA$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.206-209
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• 2002

The fixed abrasive pad(FAP) has been introduced in chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) field recently. In comparison with the general CMP which uses the slurry including abrasives, FAP takes advantage of planarity. resulting from decreasing pattern selectivity and defects such as dishing due to the reduction of abrasive concentration especially. This paper introduces the manufacturing technique of $Al_2$O$_3$-FAP using hydrophilic polymers with swelling characteristic in water and explains the self.texturing phenomenon. It also focuses on the chemical effects on tungsten film and the FAP is evaluated on the removal rate as a function of chemicals such as oxidizer, catalyst, and acid. The removal rate is achieved up to 1000A1min as about 70 percents of the general one. In the future. the research has a plan of the advanced FAP and chemicals in tungsten CMP considering micro-scratch, life-time, and within wafer non-uniformity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.525-526
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• 2007

Over-polishing is required to completely remove the material of top surface across whole wafer, in spite of a local dishing problem. This paper introduces the two-step CMP process using protective layer and high selectivity slurry, to reduce dishing amount and variation. The 30nm thick protective oxide layer was deposited on the pattern, and then polished with low selectivity slurry to partially remove the projected area while suppressing the removal rate of the recessed area. After the first step CMP process, high selectivity slurry was used to minimize the dishing amount and variation in pattern structure. Experimental result shows that two-step CMP process can be successfully applicable to reduce the dishing defect generated in over-polishing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.939-942
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• 1997

In chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) there are many factors affecting the results. Temperature is one of the factors and it affects the removal rate. That is, the higher it arise, the more the material is removed. But the detailed temperature behavior is not discovered. In this study, we discover the distribution of temperature across the pad where the wafer has just been polished. And then we reveal the cause of the result in connection with the mechanical structure. In addition, we also discover the relationship of the friction force and normal force. With the result of two forces, we get the friction coefficient and obtain the contact model of the wafer and pad.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.378-381
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• 2003

The chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) has been widely accepted for the global planarization of multi-layer structures in semiconductor manufacturing However, cost of ownership (COO) and cost of consumables (COC) were relatively increased because of expensive slurry. In this paper, the effects of different slurry composition on the oxide CMP characteristics were investigated to obtain the higher removal rate and lower non-uniformity. We prepared the various kinds of slurry. In order to save the costs of slurry, the original slurry was diluted by de-ionized water (DIW). And then, alunima abrasives were added in the diluted slurry in order to promote the mechanical force of diluted slurry.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.53 no.11
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• pp.551-555
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• 2004

In this paper, in order to reduce the high COO (cost of ownership) and COC (cost of consumables), we have collected the silica abrasive powders by filtering method after subsequent CMP (chemical mechanical polishing) process for the purpose of abrasives recycling. And then, we have studied the possibility of recycle of reused silica abrasive through the analysis of particle size distribution and FE-SEM (field emission-scanning electron microscope) measurements of abrasive powders. It was annealed the collected abrasive powders to promote the mechanical strength of reduced abrasion force. Finally, we compared the CMP characteristics between self-developed KOH-based silica abrasive slurry and original slurry. As our experimental results, we obtained the comparable rate of removal and good planarity with commercial products. Consequently we can expect the saving of high cost slurry.

• 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 Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.13 no.3 s.40
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• pp.47-51
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• 2006

Recently, CMP (Chemical Mechanical Polishing) is one of very important processing in semiconductor technology because of large integration and application of design role. CMP is a planarization process of wafer surface using the chemical and mechanical reactions. One of the most important components of the CMP system is the polishing pad. During the CMP process, the pad itself becomes smoother and glazing. Therefore it is necessary to have a pad conditioning process to refresh the pad surface, to remove slurry debris and to supply the fresh slurry on the surface. A conditioning disk is used during the pad conditioning. There are diamonds on the surface of diamond disk to remove slurry debris and to polish pad surface slightly, so density, shape and size of diamond are very important factors. In this study, we characterized diamond disk with 9 kinds of sample.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.236-236
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• 2008

(Bi,La)$Ti_3O_{12}$(BLT) thin film is one of the most attractive materials for ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) applications due to its some excellent properties such as high fatigue endurance, low processing temperature, and large remanent polarization [1-2]. The authors firstly investigated and reported the damascene process of chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) for BLT thin film capacitor on behalf of plasma etching process for fabrication of FRAM [3]. CMP process could prepare the BLT capacitors with the superior process efficiency to the plasma etching process without the well-known problems such as plasma damages and sloped sidewall, which was enough to apply to the fabrication of FRAM [2]. BLT-CMP characteristics showed the typical oxide-CMP characteristics which were related in both pressure and velocity according to Preston's equation and Hernandez's power law [2-4]. Good surface roughness was also obtained for the densification of multilevel memory structure by CMP process [3]. The well prepared BLT capacitors fabricated by CMP process should have the sufficient ferroelectric properties for FRAM; therefore, in this study the electrical properties of the BLT capacitor fabricated by CMP process were analyzed with the process parameters. Especially, the effects of CMP pressure, which had mainly affected the removal rate of BLT thin films [2], on the electrical properties were investigated. In order to check the influences of the pressure in eMP process on the ferroelectric properties of BLT thin films, the electrical test of the BLT capacitors was performed. The polarization-voltage (P-V) characteristics show a decreased the remanent polarization (Pr) value when CMP process was performed with the high pressure. The shape of the hysteresis loop is close to typical loop of BLT thin films in case of the specimen after CMP process with the pressures of 4.9 kPa; however, the shape of the hysteresis loop is not saturated due to high leakage current caused by structural and/or chemical damages in case of the specimen after CMP process with the pressures of 29.4 kPa. The leakage current density obtained with positive bias is one order lower than that with negative bias in case of 29.4 kPa, which was one or two order higher than in case of 4.9 kPa. The high pressure condition was not suitable for the damascene process of BLT thin films due to the defects in electrical properties although the better efficiency of process. by higher removal rate of BLT thin films was obtained with the high pressure of 29.4 kPa in the previous study [2].

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.88-91
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• 2003

Tungsten is widely used as a plug for the multi-level interconnection structures. However, due to the poor adhesive properties of tungsten (W) on $SiO_2$ layer, the Ti/TiN barrier layer is usually deposited onto $SiO_2$ for increasing adhesion ability with W film. Generally, for the W-CMP (chemical mechanical polishing) process, the passivation layer on the tungsten surface during CMP plays an important role. In this paper, the effect of oxidants controlling the polishing selectivity of W/Ti/TiN layer were investigated. The alumina ($Al_2O_3$) abrasive containing slurry with $H_2O_2$ as the oxidizer, was studied. As our preliminary experimental results, very low removal rates were observed for the case of no-oxidant slurry. This low removal rate is only due to the mechanical abrasive force. However, for Ti and TiN with $H_2O_2$ oxidizer, different removal rate was observed. The removal mechanism of Ti during CMP is mainly due to mechanical abrasive, whereas for TiN, it is due to the formation of metastable soluble peroxide complex.