Characteristics of 2-Step CMP (Chemical Mechanical Polishing) Process using Reused Slurry

재활용 슬러리를 사용한 2단계 CMP 특성

Recently, CMP (chemical mechanical polishing) technology has been widely used for global planarization of multi-level interconnection for ULSI applications. However, COO (cost of ownership) and COC (cost of consumables) were relatively increased because of expensive slurry. In this paper, we have studied the possibility of recycle of reused silica slurry in order to reduce the costs of CMP slurry. The post-CMP thickness and within-wafer non-uniformity(WIWNU) were measured as a function of different slurry composition. As a experimental result, the performance of reused slurry with annealed silica abrasive of 2 wt% contents was showed high removal rate and low non-uniformity. Therefore, we propose two-step CMP process as follows In the first-step CMP, we can polish the thick and rough film surface using remaked slurry, and then, in the second-step CMP, we can polish the thin film and fine pattern using original slurry. In summary, we can expect the saving of high costs of slurry.