Experiments in Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP)

Apart from giving invaluable insight into the tribological mechanisms, experimental results also serve an important purpose to provide a validation benchmark for the models. For these reasons, the literature is filled with papers furnishing experimental observations of researchers. Unfortunately, most of the papers do not provide all the parameters required by the models, thus making the validation process difficult. To facilitate the validation of our models, in-house polishing experiments were conducted. Apart from serving as a validation platform, the polishing experiments were used to optimize the polishing process for different materials.

PFTL Research Assistant(s):   Gagan Srivastava, Jonatan Sierra-Suarez
Method(s) Employed:   Chemical mechanical polishing, optical profilometry, optical microscopy
Rig(s) and/or Software(s) Employed:   GnP Poli300 Polisher, Zygo New-View 7300 Optical Interferometer, Amscope 520T Microscope, Radwag XS220 Microbalance
Sponsor(s):   Cabot Microelectronics

Sample Results:

qualitative analysis

quantitative analysis

 

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