MODELING THE MOTION OF SLURRY NANOPARTICLES DURING CHEMICAL MECHANICAL POLISHING

摘要

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) has emerged as a commonly used method for achieving global surface planarization of micro-ano-scale systems during fabrication. During CMP, the wafer to be polished is pressed against a rotating polymeric pad that is flooded with slurry. The motion of the wafer surface against the asperities of the pad and the abrasive nanoscale particles in the slurry causes the surface of the wafer to be polished to an atomically smooth level. Past studies have shown that the wear distribution is a function of the distribution of slurry particles in the wafer/pad interface, and thus it is desirable to model the migration of particles in order to predict the wear of the wafer surface. The current study involves the creation and simulation of a mathematical model which predicts the paths of slurry particles in a Lagrangian reference frame. The model predicts the effects of the various forces on each particle to determine its motion. The model also accounts for interparticle collisions and wafer/particle and pad/particle collisions. It is expected that the particle motion that is predicted from this model will allow for a more accurate correlation of the wafer surface wear distribution.