Utilizing Advanced Pad Conditioning and Pad Motion in WCMP

Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process has been widely used to planarize dielectrics and metal, which can apply to employed in integrated circuits for sub-micron technology. Despite the increased use of CMP process, it is difficult to accomplish the global planarization of free-defects in inter level dielectrics and metal. Especially, defects like (micro-scratch) lead to severe circuit failure, and affects yield. Current conditioning method - bladder type, orbital pad motion - usually provides unsuitable pad profile during ex-situ conditioning near the end of pad life. Since much of the pad wear occurs by the mechanism of bladder tripe conditioning and its orbital motion without rotation, we need to implement new ex-situ conditioner which can prevent abnormal regional force on pad caused by bladder-type and also need to rotate the pad during conditioning. Another important study of ADPC is related to the orbital scratch of which source is assumed as diamond grit dropped from the strip during ex-situ conditioning. Scratch from diamond grit damaged wafer severely so usual1y scraped. Figure 1 shows the typical shape of scratch damaged from diamond. We suspected that intensive forces to the edge area of bladder type stripper accelerated the drop of Diamond grit during conditioning, so new designed Flat stripper was introduced.