• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.44-51
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• 2005

In this paper, a new polishing head with the variable pressure structure was studied to improve the planarization uniformity of the conventional template-metal head. Metal surface waviness and slurry distribution on the pad have been known to affect the polishing uniformity even in the synchronized quill and platen velocities. A polishing head with silicon rubber sheet was used to get a curved pressure distribution. In the experiment, the vertical deflection behavior on the pad was characterized with back pressure in the air chamber. Quill force increased linearly with backpressure. However, backpressure under a quill force made the upward movements of the quill. In the wafer polishing experiments, polishing rate and polishing thickness distribution were severely changed with backpressure. The best uniformity was observed with the standard deviation off.5％ level of average polishing removal 215nm at backpressure 12.1kPa.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.963-967
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• 2008

There are many factors to affect polishing performance normally in chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process. One of the factors is a pad profile. A pad profile has not been considered as a significant factor. However, a pad profile is easily changed by conditioning process in CMP, and then changed pad profile affects polishing performance. Therefore, understanding how the pad profile is changed by conditioning process is very important. In this paper, through the simulation based on kinematic analysis, the variation of the pad profile was described in accordance with difference condition of conditioning process. A swing-arm type conditioner was applied in this simulation. A swing-arm type conditioner plays a role of generating asperities on pad surface. The conditions of conditioing process to get uniform removal were also investigated by comparing the simulation with the experiment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.55-56
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• 2006

This research was carried out to observe the structure and characteristics of SUBA pad for silicon wafer polishing. As the diamond size is smaller and shape is rounder, the pad cut rate becomes smaller. From the experimental results, we suggests that the diamond grade should be over 680 when the diamond mesh is between #100 and #170 for SUBA pad.

• 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.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.53-57
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• 2007

In this study, a novel slurry containing ceria as the abrasive particles was analyzed in terms of its frictional, thermal and kinetic attributes for interlayer dielectric (ILD) CMP application. The novel slurry was used to polish 200-mm blanket ILD wafers on an $IC1000_{TM}$ K-groove pad with in-situ conditioning. Polishing pressures ranged from 1 to 5 PSI and the sliding velocity ranged from 0.5 to 1.5 m/s. Shear force and pad temperature were measured in real time during the polishing process. The frictional analysis indicated that boundary lubrication was the dominant tribological mechanism. The measured average pad leading edge temperature increased from 26.4 to $38.4\;^{\circ}C$ with the increase in polishing power. The ILD removal rate also increased with the polishing power, ranging from 400 to 4000 A/min. The ILD removal rate deviated from Prestonian behavior at the highest $p{\times}V$ polishing condition and exhibited a strong correlation with the measured average pad leading edge temperature. A modified two-step Langmuir-Hinshelwood kinetic model was used to simulate the ILD removal rate. In this model, transient flash heating temperature is assumed to dominate the chemical reaction temperature. The model successfully captured the variable removal rate behavior at the highest $p{\times}V$ polishing condition and indicates that the polishing process was mechanical limited in the low $p{\times}V$ polishing region and became chemically and mechanically balanced with increasing polishing power.

• 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 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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• 2006.06a
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• pp.569-570
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• 2006

The conditioning process is very important process for the CMP (Chemical Mechaning Polishing). This process regenerates the roughness of the polishing pad during the CMP process, increases the MRR (Material Removal Rate) and gives us longer pad life so conditioning process is essential for the CMP, and conditioning process influences the polishing pad shape gradually. Conditining process is related to the Non-Uniformity. In This paper, Kinematic of the conditioning process and mathematic modeling of the pad wear is studied and result shows how the various parameters influence the pad shape and WIWNU[1]. Consequently through these parameter, optimal design of the conditioning process equipment is predicted.

• 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.