2004 Volume 73 Issue 3 Pages 368-372
The focus margin of lithography becomes increasingly critical as the LSI design rule decreases. Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is an essential process for planarization and is widely applied in ULSI processing. As the slurry characteristics greatly influence the polishing performance, slurry optimization is important in achieving a high degree of planarization. To study the polishing mechanism in detail, the tests simulating the dielectric CMP process have been performed using an atomic force microscope. The phenomena occurring between the slurry and the wafer surface were evaluated.
