Assessing a system for CMP waste minimization and water recycling

摘要

Although the semiconductor industry has gradually come to embrace chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) as an enabling technology for the production of devices at or below 0.35 urn, one of CMP's big drawbacks has been its generally high cost of ownership in terms of water consumption and waste treatment. In fact, the CMP process can consume as much as 50% of a fab's ultrapure water (UPW). While manufacturers who are new to the technique and even those with one or two CMP polishers in their pilot production lines can get by without increasing their UPW capacity and adopting special waste treatment programs, they may be forced to do so as they add additional polishers.