Abstract
As the substrates of semiconductor devices, silicon wafers are required to have extremely high surface flatness for increasing the integration density of the devices. In particular, edge roll-off, which seriously deteriorates the surface flatness near the wafer edge during polishing process as the final stage of the wafer manufacturing, is strongly required to be suppressed. In this study, we investigated the properties of polishing pad required for decreasing edge roll-off using finite element structural analysis and, as a result, it was found that polishing pad with small thickness and small deformation could improve the surface flatness near the wafer edge. Also, we investigated the influence of measurement conditions in indentation test on measured deformation property of polishing pad through the indentation test for different types of polishing pads. On the basis of the investigation, we proposed the evaluation method of deformation property of polishing pad for estimating the obtained edge surface flatness.
