Effect of Conditioning Process on Polishing Pad Surface Texture

In-plane Micro-Deformation Distribution Characteristics of Pad Surface Texture and Contact Conditions among Pad Groove

Abstract

In the CMP, the polishing pad surface characteristics are very important for planarization process of wafer. However, no effective quantitative evaluation methods for pad surface texture have been established. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of conditioning process on pad surface texture. In this paper, we discuss two experiments for IC1000 pad; (I) The in-plane micro-deformation distribution characteristics of pad surface texture using the digital image correlation (DIC) method, and (II) the contact conditions among pad groove using image contact analysis. As a result, the following points were observed. (1) The DIC method can measure the in-plane micro-deformation distribution characteristics of the IC1000 pad. (2) It is important to evaluate the pad surface texture among the groove side by the conditioning process using the contact image analysis.