SBIR Phase II: Chemically Impregnated Nanoparticles for Use in Copper Chemical Mechanical Planarization Slurry

这个小型企业创新研究第二阶段项目的重点是铜化学机械平面化（CMP）浆料的开发。 半导体制造中的一个重要步骤是CMP，其使用含有研磨剂和化学成分的水性浆料与抛光垫结合以去除材料并平坦化晶片。 随着器件尺寸的减小，下一代CMP浆料必须在越来越高的纵横比结构上实现平坦化。 目前的铜CMP浆料具有有限的平坦化效率（PE）（去除的台阶高度与去除的厚度的比率）。 如果PE没有改善，CMP将成为半导体制造工艺中越来越昂贵和限制的步骤。 拟议的努力旨在开发一种铜CMP浆料含有纳米尺寸的接触释放胶囊（纳米CRC）。 基于Nano-CRC的浆料由核-壳纳米颗粒组成，其中机械和化学组分组合成单个实体。 纳米CRC浆料的使用同时产生高PE和高材料去除率，这将改善平面性并降低半导体制造商的加工成本。 该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力包括推进CMP浆料配方的最新发展，并使下一代微电子器件的规模继续缩小。 铜CMP浆料市场目前为3.4亿美元，预计到2016年将增长到5亿美元以上，这是由于随着器件继续缩小，铜CMP步骤数量增加。 此外，能够实现高生产量和高平面性的铜CMP浆料将产生对于半导体制造商具有非常高的投资回报的产品。 纳米CRC技术可用于以不同的化学有效载荷包覆纳米颗粒，并且也可使用不同的基础纳米颗粒（即氧化铝）。 该技术具有用作平台以提供用于各种行业的解决方案的潜力，所述各种行业既在可能用于其它CMP抛光步骤的CMP领域内，也用于其它非CMP抛光工艺，包括光学材料、玻璃抛光、清洁等。

This Small Business Innovative Research Phase II project is focused on the development of a copper chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) slurry. An important step in semiconductor manufacturing is CMP, which uses an aqueous slurry containing abrasives and chemical components in conjunction with a polishing pad to remove material and to planarize the wafer. As device sizes decrease, next generation CMP slurries must achieve planarization on increasingly higher aspect ratio structures. Current copper CMP slurries have a limited planarization efficiency (PE) (ratio of step height removed to thickness removed). Without an improvement in PE, CMP is going to become an increasingly expensive and limiting step in the semiconductor manufacturing process. The proposed effort aims to develop a copper CMP slurry containing nano-sized contact release capsules (nano-CRC). Nano-CRC based slurries consist of a core-shell nanoparticle where the mechanical and chemical components are combined into a single entity. Use of the nano-CRC slurry yields simultaneously high PE and high material removal rate, which will improve planarity and decrease processing costs for semiconductor manufacturers. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project includes advancing the state-of-the-art in CMP slurry formulation and enabling the continued scale down of next generation microelectronic devices. The copper CMP slurry market is currently $340M, and expected to grow to greater than $500M by 2016 due to the increase in the number of Cu CMP steps as devices continue to shrink. Additionally, a copper CMP slurry that can achieve both high through-put and high planarity would yield a product with a very high return on investment for semiconductor manufacturers. The nano-CRC technology can be used to impregnate nanoparticles with different chemical payloads, and different base nanoparticles can also be used (i.e. alumina). The technology has potential to be used as a platform to provide solutions for a variety of industries, both within the realm of CMP where it may be possible to use on other CMP polishing steps, and also for other non-CMP polishing processes, including optical materials, glass polishing, cleaning, etc.