Pad Physical Properties Effects on Removal Rate in a STI Ceria CMP Process

As one of the main consumables of chemical mechanical polishing, pad plays an important role in providing mechanical polishing force, carrying and distributing polishing fluid and removing polishing by-products during chemical mechanical grinding. In recent years, with the progress of chip process nodes, CMP technology has become more and more important, and has become an indispensable flattening process for processes below 0.35um, and the requirements for CMP consumables are also increasing. It is well known that abrasive pads are closely related to wafer defect and uniformity. In this article, we introduce an excellent abrasive Pad with polishing pads, cushioning layers, additives, and microspheres. This includes adjusting the pore distribution of Top Pad and uniformity with the unique hole design of sub Pad. Developed both flexible and rigid pad, combined with the particle size, charge, component characteristics of slurry the size of grinding disc by drilling arrangement, the change of Remove Rate during the whole lifetime is less than 100A/s, and the sensitivity of 300mm wafer edge thickness to pressure can reach ±20% response. Easier to adjust Profile and with the help of functional software such as LUT/iAPC/FVXE, Uniformity remains high. Aiming at defect, this abrasive pad also adjusts the ratio of soft and hard chains/the number of microspheres, so that the inline Wafer Suffer Micro Scratch is basically maintained at about 2 per piece.