• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.521-526
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• 2005

Within wafer non-uniformity(WIWNU) improves as the stiffness of pad decrease. We designed the pad groove to study of pad stiffness on WIWNU in Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) and measured the pad stiffness according to groove width. The groove influences effective pad stiffness although original mechanical properties of pad are unchanged by grooving. Also, it affects the flow of slurry that has an effect on the lubrication regime and polishing results. An Increase of the apparent contact area of pad by groove width results in decrease of effective pad stiffness. WIWNU and profile of removal tate improved as effective pad stiffness decreased. Because grooving the pad reduce its effective stiffness and it makes slurry distribution to be uniform. Futhermore, it ensures that pad conforms to wafer-scale flatness variability. By grooving the top pad, it is possible to reduce its stiffness and hence reduce WIWNU and edge effect.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2005.07a
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• pp.38-39
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• 2005

We have investigated the effect of the pad surface characteristics such as roughness, groove density and wear of pad on within wafer non-uniformity(WIWNU) in chemical mechanical polishing(CMP). We found that WIWNU increases as pad surface roughness($R_{pk}$; Reduced peak height) increases in an early stage of polishing. But after polishing time goes to a certain extent, WIWNU decreases as uniformity of pad surface roughness. Also, groove of pad has effect on relative pad stiffness although original mechanical properties of pad are unchanged by grooving. WIWNU decreases as relative pad stiffness decreases. In addition, conditioning process causes non-uniform wear of pad during in CMP. The profile of pad wear has a significant effect on WIWNU.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Conference
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• 2002.10b
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• pp.433-434
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• 2002

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.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.22 no.8 s.173
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• pp.27-33
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• 2005

Polishing pads play an important role in chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) which has recently been recognized at the most effective method to achieve global planarization. In this paper, we have investigated CMP characteristics as a change of groove density of polishing pads. The parameter $(K_n)$ is proposed to estimate groove density of pad. The $K_n$ is defined as groove area divided by pitch area. As the groove density value increased, removal rate increased to some point and then gradually saturated in case of increasing the groove density excessively. In addition Within wafer non-uniformity(WIWNU) worse as groove density increased excessively, although WIWNU improved as groove density increased. Also the uniformity of temperature of pad surface decreased as the groove density increased. It was because that the cooling effect increased as groove density increased. In other words, increasing the groove density which means the apparent contact area of pad has influence on amount of discharge of slurry during polishing process.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.212-220
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• 2002

The finishing process for die and mold manufacturing is very important because it influences the final quality of products. Injection molds need higher quality surface than general purpose dies and molds. Conventional polishing can not make mold surface down to nanometer roughness efficiently because of their loading and glazing. This paper focused on the development of fixed abrasive pad using water swelling mechanism of polymer binder network. Self-conditioning was recognized as the long term polishing stabilization tool without any loading or glazing because water makes fixed abrasives free by swelling of the pad. Consequently, stable nano-polishing process has been applied on the injection mold, from the experimental results with polished surface roughness of Ra 15.1nm on STD-11 die steel.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.569-573
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• 2012

We investigated the speed change of the diamond spherical abrasive during the substrate surface polishing under the pad compression by using classical molecular dynamics modeling. We performed three-dimensional molecular dynamics simulations using the Morse potential functions for the copper substrate and the Tersoff potential function for the diamond abrasive. As the compressive pressure increased, the indented depth of the diamond abrasive increased and then, the speed of the diamond abrasive along the direction of the pad moving was decreased. Molecular simulation result such as the abrasive speed decreasing due to the pad pressure increasing gave important information for the chemical mechanical polishing including the mechanical removal rate with both the pad speed and the pad compressive pressure.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.50 no.9
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• pp.438-443
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• 2001

In the shallow trench isolation(STI)-chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process, the key issues are the optimized thickness control, within-wafer-non-uniformity, and the possible defects such as pad oxide damage and nitride residue. The defect like nitride residue and silicon (or pad oxide) damage after STI-CMP process were discussed to accomplish its optimum process condition. To understand its optimum process condition, overall STI related processes including reverse moat etch, trench etch, STI fill and STI-CMP were discussed. Consequently, we could conclude that law trench depth and high CMP thickness can cause nitride residue, and high trench depth and over-polishing can cause silicon damage.

• KIEE International Transactions on Electrophysics and Applications
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• v.2C no.5
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• pp.262-267
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• 2002

In this paper, we first studied the factors affecting the motor current (MC) signal, which was strongly affected by the systematic hardware noises depending on polishing such as pad conditioning and arm oscillation of platen and recipe, head motor. Next, we studied the end point detection (EPD) for the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process of shallow trench isolation (STI) with reverse moat structure. The MC signal showed a high amplitude peak in the fore part caused by the reverse meal. pattern. We also found that the EP could not be detected properly and reproducibly due to the pad conditioning effect, especially when conventional low selectivity slurry was used. Even when there was no pad conditioning effect, the EPD method could not be applied, since the measured end points were always the same due to the characteristics of the reverse moat structure with an open nitride layer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.715-718
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• 2004

In this paper, we studied the characteristics of new polishing pad, which can apply W-CMP process for global planarization of multi-level interconnection structure. The hardness and density were measured as a function of groove pattern. Also, we compared the pore size through the SEM photograph. Finally, we investigated the CMP characteristics with five different kind of groove pattern sample. Through the above results, we can select optimum groove pattern, so we can expect to begin home product of polishing pad.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.78-81
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• 2003

Polishing Processes are widely used in the glass, optical, die and semiconductor industry and are conventionally carried out using abrasive slurry and a polishing pad. But abrasive slurry process has a weak point that is high cost of handling of used slurry and hard controllability of slurry. Recently, some researches have attempted to solve these problems and one method is the development of a fixed abrasive pad. FAP has a couple of advantages including clean environment, lower CoC, easy controllability and higher form accuracy. But FAP also has a weak point that is need of dressing because of glazing and loading. The paper introduces the basic concept and fabrication technique of FAP using hydrophilic polymers with swelling characteristics in water and explains the self-conditioning phenomenon. Experimental results demonstrate to achieve nano surface roughness of soda lime glass for optical application