Changhong Wu

By Changhong Wu and Xiaoyan Liao

Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) has been widely used in integrated circuit (IC) processing to achieve both local and global surface planarity through combined chemical and mechanical actions. The lubrication plays a significant role in CMP and can be determined by the Stribeck curve since it provides direct evidence of the extent of contact among wafer, pad asperities, and slurry particles. The advancements in the construction of the Stribeck curve are highlighted in this chapter. Traditionally, the procedure for constructing the Stribeck curve is as follows: (1) polish wafers at various pressures and sliding velocities to obtain the coefficient of friction (COF) values; (2) plot the experimental data as COF vs. Sommerfeld number; (3) construct the Stribeck curve via curve fitting. Recently, an alternative method was presented to construct the Stribeck curve via only performing one wafer polishing experiment. Pressure and sliding velocity are varied separately or together for a desired length of time, so that multiple measurements can be taken within one run. In this study, a back-propagation (BP) neural network is proposed to construct the Stribeck curve. Results show that the BP neural network could construct a more accurate Stribeck curve and thus could better provide insight into the lubrication mechanism of CMP processes.

Part of the book: Advances in Tribology