Chemo mechanical Polishing

Need and importance of CMP:

The progressively decreasing feature size of the circuit components has tremendously increased the need for
global surface planarization of the various thin film layers that constitute the integrated circuit (IC). Global
planarization, being one of the major solutions to meet the demands of the industry, needs to be achieved
following the most efficient polishing procedure. Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is the planarization method
that has been selected by the semiconductor industry today. CMP, an ancient process used for glass polishing, was
adopted first as a microelectronic fabrication process by IBM in the 80 s for SiO2 polishing.

Wafer:

In electronics, a wafer (also called a slice or substrate)[1] is a thin slice of semiconductor, such as

a crystalline silicon (c-Si), used for the fabrication of integrated circuits and, in photovoltaics, to
manufacture solar cells. The wafer serves as the substrate for microelectronic devices built in and upon the
wafer. It undergoes many microfabrication processes, such as doping, ion implantation, etching, thin-film
deposition of various materials, and photolithographic patterning. Finally, the individual microcircuits are
separated by wafer dicing and packaged as an integrated circuit.
Mechanism & Principle:

complex interplay of tribo-mechanical phenomena occurring at the interface of the pad and wafer in presence of
the fluid slurry medium.

Construction and Working Principle:

The CMP polishers use a single robot system to move the wafer and hold it on the carrier. The polisher is
comprised of two rotating platens; one covered with a hard pad for bulk material removal and other with
relatively soft pad for buffing. The wafer is pressed face down on the pad by the carrier and the slurry is deposited
close to the center of the pad, from where the centrifugal force spreads it all over. The mechanical properties,
surface morphology, structure, absorbency, etc. strongly affect the slurry distribution and polishing . The polishing
platen on these tools is around 22 in. in diameter which is more than 7.5 times the size of a 200 nm wafer . The
actual slurry utilization of these processors is poor and the pH of the slurry changes during use as there is an
absence of any slurry reprocessing unit . The amount of slurry that is actually used for processing at the interface
is function of pad properties, pad conditioner, pad topography and slurry viscosity. Thus, the pads must be
conditioned to bring the pad back to flat; remove materials from pores; and rebuild the nap. Simple manipulation
of the machine parameters is sufficient to increase the material removal rate in these polishers. However, issues
such as platen wobble need to be taken care off in order to deliver CMP wafers in the acceptable range. The
schematic of the first generation polishers is similar to that shown in Fig.

Abrasive slurry: Hydrogen Per oxide + chromium oxide

Some Limitations & Demerits with CMP:

There are some teething problems associated with CMP process such as delamination, microscratches, dishing,
erosion, corrosion, inefficient post-CMP clean.