Silicon/Pad Pressure Measurements During Chemical Mechanical Polishing

Chemical mechanical polishing refers to a process by which silicon and partially-processed integrated circuits (IC's) built on silicon substrates are polished to produce planar surfaces for the continued manufacturing of IC's. Chemical mechanical polishing is done by pressing the silicon wafer, face down, onto a rotating platen that is covered by a rough polyurethane pad. During rotation, the pad is flooded with a slurry that contains nanoscale particles. The pad deforms and the roughness of the surface entrains the slurry into the interface. The asperities contact the wafer and the surface is polished in a three-body abrasion process. The contact of the wafer with the 'soft' pad produces a unique elastohydrodynamic situation in which a suction force is imposed at the interface. This added force is non-uniform and can be on the order of the applied pressure on the wafer. We have measured the magnitude and spatial distribution of this suction force. This force will be described within the context of a model of the sliding of hard surfaces on soft substrates.