GOALI: A Multidisciplinary Industry-University Partnership to Assess the Processes Controlling Chemical-Mechanical Polishing

化学机械抛光（CMP）是半导体制造界非常感兴趣的一项技术。它将具有不同表面形貌的晶圆转变为具有局部和全局平面的晶圆。在CMP过程中，晶圆片面朝下压在旋转抛光垫上，抛光垫上覆盖着磨料颗粒的水悬浮液（浆液）。亚利桑那州立大学的化学和材料工程学院将与摩托罗拉、罗德尔和SpeedFam-IPEC的工业工程师合作，对关键的化学和机械抛光现象进行基本描述，并将这些描述结合到统一的、经过实验验证的CMP过程模型中。使用这些模型将研究SiO2和Cu表面的抛光。将进行浆液颗粒与晶圆表面之间相互作用的分子动力学模拟，以及在CMP过程中薄膜上和薄膜内发生的反应。将进行表面光谱研究，以评估在CMP过程中发生的表面钝化和溶解反应的速率，并评估浆液渗透到晶圆表面的速率。这些基本的化学和物理描述将与现有的基于应力效应的有限元去除率模型相结合，以产生统一的CMP过程模型。该项目预计将提供CMP的物理和化学现象的识别和量化，并在基本模型中表达这些结果。该模型可用于半导体晶圆抛光工艺的优化和开发。

Chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) is a technology of tremendous interest to the semiconductor manufacturing community. It transforms wafers with varying surface topography into wafers with locally and globally flat surfaces. During CMP, a wafer is pressed face-down against a rotating polishing pad that is covered with an aqueous suspension of abrasive particles (slurry). Chemical and materials engineering faculty at Arizona State University will work with industry engineers from Motorola, Rodel, and SpeedFam-IPEC to develop fundamental descriptions of key chemical and mechanical polishing phenomena, and will combine these descriptions into unified, experimentally validated models of CMP processes. Polishing of SiO2 and Cu surfaces will be studied using these models. Molecular dynamic simulations of the interactions between slurry particles and the wafer surfaces will be performed, as well as the reactions that occur on and within thin films during CMP. Surface spectroscopy studies will be performed to assess the rates of surface passivation and dissolution reactions occurring during CMP, and the rate of slurry penetration into the wafer surfaces will be assessed. These fundamental chemical and physical descriptions will be combined with existing finite element removal rate models that are based on stress effects to produce unified CMP process models. The project is expected to provide the identification and quantification of the physical and chemical phenomena of CMP and expression of these results in fundamental models. The models will be useful to industry in the optimization and development of polishing protocols for semiconductor wafers.