• 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 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2001.11b
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• pp.171-175
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• 2001

Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process has been widely used to planarize dielectrics and metal, which can apply to employed in integrated circuits for sub-micron technology. Despite the increased use of CMP process, it is difficult to accomplish the global planarization of free-defects in inter level dielectrics and metal. Especially, defects like (micro-scratch) lead to severe circuit failure, and affects yield. Current conditioning method - bladder type, orbital pad motion- usually provides unsuitable pad profile during ex-situ conditioning near the end of pad life. Since much of the pad wear occurs by the mechanism of bladder type conditioning and its orbital motion without rotation, we need to implement new ex-situ conditioner which can prevent abnormal regional force on pad caused by bladder-type and also need to rotate the pad during conditioning. Another important study of ADPC is related to the orbital scratch of which source is assumed as diamond grit dropped from the strip during ex-situ conditioning. Scratch from diamond grit damaged wafer severely so usually scraped. Figure 1 shows the typical shape of scratch damaged from diamond. e suspected that intensive forces to the edge area of bladder type stripper accelerated the drop of Diamond grit during conditioning. so new designed Flat stripper was introduced.

• 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.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.26-31
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• 2007

The goal of this study is to determine if High Pressure Micro Jet (HPMJ) conditioning can be used as a substitute for, or in conjunction with, conventional diamond pad conditioning. Five conditioning methods were studied during which 50 ILD wafers were polished successively in a 100-mm scaled polisher and removal rate (RR), coefficient of friction (COF), pad flattening ratio (PFR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) measurements were obtained. Results indicated that PFR increased rapidly, and COF and removal rate decreased significantly, when conditioning was not employed. With diamond conditioning, both removal rate and COF were stable from wafer to wafer, and low PFR values were observed. SEM images indicated that clean grooves could be achieved by HPMJ pad conditioning, suggesting that HPMJ may have the potential to reduce micro scratches and defects caused by slurry abrasive particle residues inside grooves. Regardless of different pad conditioning methods, a linear correlation was observed between temperature, COF and removal rate, while an inverse relationship was seen between COF and PFR.

• 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.20 no.10
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• pp.839-845
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• 2007

In this paper, a polishing pad has been analyzed in detail, to understand surface phenomena of polishing process. The polishing pad plays a key role in polishing process and is one of the important layer in polishing process, because it is a reaction layer of polishing[1]. Pad surface physical property is also ruled by pad profile. The profile and roughness of pad is controlled by different types of conditioning tool. Conditioning tool add mechanical force to pad, and make some roughness and profile. Formed pad surface will affect on polishing performance such as RR (Removal Rate) and uniformity in CMP Pad surface condition is changed by conditioning tool and dummy run and is stable at final. And this research, we want to reduce break-in and dummy polishing process by analysis of pad surface and artificial machining to make stable pad surface. The surface treatment or machining enables to control the surface of polishing pad. Therefore, this research intends to verify the effect of the buffing process on pad surface through analysis of the removal rate, friction force and temperature. 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 most conventional type.

• 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.

• 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 Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.171-175
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• 2001

Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process has been widely used to planarize dielectrics and metal, which can apply to employed in integrated circuits for sub-micron technology. Despite the increased use of CMP process, it is difficult to accomplish the global planarization of free-defects in inter level dielectrics and metal. Especially, defects like (micro-scratch) lead to severe circuit failure, and affects yield. Current conditioning method - bladder type, orbital pad motion - usually provides unsuitable pad profile during ex-situ conditioning near the end of pad life. Since much of the pad wear occurs by the mechanism of bladder tripe conditioning and its orbital motion without rotation, we need to implement new ex-situ conditioner which can prevent abnormal regional force on pad caused by bladder-type and also need to rotate the pad during conditioning. Another important study of ADPC is related to the orbital scratch of which source is assumed as diamond grit dropped from the strip during ex-situ conditioning. Scratch from diamond grit damaged wafer severely so usual1y scraped. Figure 1 shows the typical shape of scratch damaged from diamond. We suspected that intensive forces to the edge area of bladder type stripper accelerated the drop of Diamond grit during conditioning, so new designed Flat stripper was introduced.

• 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.