Planarizing difficult topographies using contact planarization

摘要

Chemical mechanical planarization has the ability to planarize interlayer dielectric layers, tungsten layers, and even metal layers of aluminum and copper to adequately meet current industry needs. However, its compatibility with fragile low-k materials used in copper dual damascene processes is questionable. CMP is also undesirable for many compound semiconductors, for silicon processes where features are both dense and isolated within the same chip, and for many microelectromechanical systems applications. This article describes contact planarization, an alternative to CMP and a planarization technique that has exhibited both global and local planarization and demonstrated flat, uniform films over both isolated and dense features.