• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.62-66
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• 2006

Advanced CMP conditioner design requires investigations of key conditioner manufacturing parameters and their effects on pad surface and then wafer performance. In the present investigation, diamond shape, concentration, distribution, and other key manufacturing parameters are considered to improve CMP process stability and conditioner life. Self avoiding random distribution ($SARD^{TM}$) of diamond abrasives has been developed and both numerical simulation and experimental results show very stable and reliable polishing performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2006.09b
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• pp.1128-1129
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• 2006

Currently Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) has become an essential step in the overall semiconductor wafer fabrication technology. Especially the CMP pad conditioner, one of the diamond tools, is required to have strong diamond cohesion. Strong cohesion between diamond and metal matrix prevents macro scratch on the wafer during CMP Process. Typically the diamond tool has been manufactured by sintered, brazed and electro-plated methods. In this paper, some results will be reported of cohesion between diamond and metal matrix of the diamond tools prepared by three different manufacturing methods. The cohesion force of brazed diamond tool is found stronger than the others. This cohesion force is increased in reverse proportion to the contact area of diamond and metal matrix. The brazed diamond tool has a strong chemical combination of the interlayer composed of Cr in metal matrix and C in diamond, which enhance the interfacial cohesion strength between diamonds and metal matrix.

• 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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• 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 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.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.16 no.5 s.98
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• pp.40-47
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• 1999

In CMP for semiconductor wafer films, the acceptable within-chip planarity, within-wafer and wafer-to-wafer nonuniformity could be achieved by conditioning. The role of conditioning is to remove continuously polishing residues from pad and to maintain the initial pad surface pores. To reach these requirements, the diamond grits disk has been considered as a conventional conditioner. However, we have investigated many defects as scratch on wafers out of diamond grits shedding, contaminations from bonding materials, and pad pore subsidences by over-conditioning. So, this paper studies the effect of ultrasonic vibration in CMP conditioning as a representative. The effect of ultrasonic vibration was certified through ILD, Metal CMP.

• 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.

• 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

• 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.