A Study on Recycle of Abrasive Particles in One-used Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) Slurry

산화막 CMP 슬러리의 연마 입자 재활용에 관한 연구

Recently, the recycle of CMP (chemical mechanical polishing) slurries have been positively considered in order to reduce the high COO (cost of ownership) and COC (cost of consumables) in CMP process. Among the composition of slurries (buffer solution, bulk solution, abrasive particle, oxidizer, inhibitor, suspension, antifoaming agent, dispersion agent), the abrasive particles are one of the most important components. Especially, the abrasive particles of slurry are needed in order to achieve a good removal rate. However, the cost of abrasives, is still very high. In this paper, we have collected the silica abrasive powders by filtering after subsequent CMP process for the purpose of abrasive particle recycling. And then, we have studied the possibility of recycle of reused silica abrasive through the analysis of particle size and hardness. Also, we annealed the collected abrasive powders to promote the mechanical strength of reduced abrasion force. Finally, we compared the CMP characteristics between self-developed KOH-based silica abrasive slurry and original slury, As our experimental results, we obtained the comparable removal rate and good planarity with commercial products. Consequently, we can expect the saving of high cost slurry.