SBIR Phase I: Microfabricated Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) Pad Conditioners with Controlled Diamond Geometrical Protrusions

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在开发微加工金刚石化学机械抛光（CMP）垫调理剂，作为半导体和光学抛光中传统砂基调理剂的替代品。该项目将利用基于化学气相沉积（CVD）的超晶金刚石技术来创建一个狭窄的尺寸分布和形状控制的突出阵列，作为磨料。由此产生的整体磨料表面将能够承受CMP浆料存在时的磨损和腐蚀，而不会损失磨料结构。该项目的更广泛/商业影响将是提供新的CMP衬垫调节器，以满足32纳米节点半导体技术及其他CMP工艺所需的精度。在CMP工艺中，旋转垫与化学活性浆料相结合，用于抛光表面。为了保持持久的性能，必须定期使用磨砂垫调理剂对垫片进行重新调理。当晶圆级结构尺寸接近10-30纳米时，现有的调理技术将不足以维持在规格范围内的抛光性能。在这个项目中，将开发具有工程形状和位置的突起阵列，以用作pad调理剂。预计它们的性能将大大超过现有的护理剂，展示出更长的护垫和护理剂寿命，更精细的抛光公差，提高护垫护理剂的可靠性和可预测性，从而整体提高CMP性能。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop micro-fabricated diamond Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) pad conditioners as a replacement of traditional grit-based conditioners for semiconductor and optical polishing. This project will utilize Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) based ultrananocrystalline diamond technologies to create a narrowly size-distributed and shape-controlled array of protrusions to act as abrasive grit. The resulting monolithic abrasive surface will be able to withstand wear and corrosion in the presence of CMP slurries without loss of abrasive structures. The broader/commercial impact of this project will be the potential to provide new CMP pad conditioners to meet the required precision of CMP process for the 32 nanometer node semiconductor technologies and beyond. In the CMP process, rotating pads combined with chemically-active slurries are used to polish surfaces. For sustained performance, the pads must be periodically re-conditioned using abrasive pad conditioners. As wafer-level structure dimensions approach 10-30 nanometer, current conditioning technology will be inadequate to maintain polishing performance within specifications. In this project, arrays of protrusions with engineered shapes and locations will be developed to be used as pad conditioners. They are expected to dramatically outperform the existing conditioners, demonstrating longer life-spans for pads and conditioners, finer polishing tolerances, increased reliability and predictability of pad conditioners, thus overall improved CMP performance.