Study on the Optimization of HSS STI-CMP Process

HSS STI-CMP 공정의 최적화에 관한 연구

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technology for global planarization of multi-level inter-connection structure has been widely studied for the next generation devices. CMP process has been paid attention to planarized pre-metal dielectric (PMD), inter-layer dielectric (ILD) interconnections. Expecially, shallow trench isolation (STI) used to CMP process on essential. Recently, the direct STI-CMP process without the conventional complex reverse moat etch process has established by using slurry additive with the high selectivity between $SiO_2$ and $Si_3N_4$ films for the purpose of process simplification and n-situ end point detection(EPD). However, STI-CMP process has various defects such as nitride residue, tom oxide and damage of silicon active region. To solve these problems, in this paper, we studied the planarization characteristics using a high selectivity slurry(HSS). As our experimental results, it was possible to achieve a global planarization and STI-CMP process could be dramatically simplified. Also we estimated the reliability through the repeated tests with the optimized process conditions in order to identify the reproducibility of HSS STI-CMP process.