• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.358-359
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• 2005

Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process depends on a variety of variables. Especially, surface roughness of pad plays a key role in material removal in CMP in terms of transportation ability of pores and real contact area. The surface roughness is deteriorated with polishing time by applied pressure and relative velocity. In this reason, diamond conditioner has been used to maintain the roughness on the pad. The authors try to investigate the correlation between pad roughness and frictional behavior by comparing ex-situ conditioning with in-situ conditioning.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2005.07a
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• pp.193-194
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• 2005

By the high-temperature pad conditioning process: The slurry residues in pores and grooves of the polishing pad were clearly removed. These clear pores and enlarged grooves made the slurry attack the oxide surface. The changed slurry properties by high-temperature pad conditioning process made the oxide surface hydro-carbonate to be removed easily.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.563-564
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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 diamond disk use 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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• 2004.11a
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• pp.731-734
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• 2004

As the integrated circuit device shrinks to the smaller dimension, the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process was required for the global planarization of inter-metal dielectric(IMD) layer with free-defect. Polishing pads play a key role in CMP, which has been recognized as a critical step to improve the topography of wafers for semiconductor fabrication. It is investigated the performance of $SiO_2-CMP$ process using commercial silica slurry as a pad conditioning temperature increased after CMP process. This study also showed the change of SEM images in the pore geometry on the CMP pad surface after use with a different pad conditioning temperature.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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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• 2005.11a
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• pp.70-71
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• 2005

The material that is both conductive in electricity and transparent to the visible ray is called transparent conducting thin film. It is investigated the performance of ITO-CMP process using commercial silica slurry with the various conditioning temperatures by control of de-ionized water (DIW). Removal rate of ITO thin film was improved after CMP process after pad conditioning at the high temperature by improved exclusion of slurry residues in polishing pad..

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.331-337
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• 2017

A readout circuit for a tactile sensor pad based on force sensing resistors was proposed, which was composed of an analog signal conditioning circuit and a digital circuit with a microcontroller. The conventional signal conditioning circuit has a dc offset voltage in the output signal, which results from the reference voltage applied to the FSR devices. The offset voltage reduces the dynamic range of the circuit and makes it difficult to operate the circuit under a low voltage power supply. In the proposed signal conditioning circuit, the dc offset voltage was removed completely. The microcontroller with A/D converter and D/A converter was used to enlarge the measurement range of pressure. For this, the microcontroller adjusts the FSR reference voltage according to the resistance magnitude of FSR under pressure. The operation of the proposed readout circuit which was connected to a tactile sensor pad with $5{\times}10$ FSR array was verified experimentally. The experimental results show the proposed readout circuit has the wider measurement range of pressure than the conventional circuit. The proposed circuit is suitable for low voltage and low power applications.

• 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.