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

这个小型企业创新研究二期项目的重点是铜化学机械刨平（CMP）浆料的开发。半导体制造中的一个重要步骤是CMP，它使用含有磨料和化学成分的水泥浆与抛光垫一起去除材料并使晶圆平整。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面化。目前的铜CMP浆料具有有限的平面化效率（PE）（去除台阶高度与去除厚度的比率）。如果没有PE的改进，CMP将成为半导体制造过程中越来越昂贵和受限的一步。该研究旨在开发一种含有纳米接触释放胶囊（nano-CRC）的铜CMP浆料。基于纳米crc的浆料由核壳纳米颗粒组成，其中机械和化学成分被组合成一个单一的实体。使用纳米crc浆料可以同时获得高PE和高材料去除率，这将改善半导体制造商的平面度并降低加工成本。该项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力包括推进最先进的CMP浆液配方，并使下一代微电子设备的规模持续缩小。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，因为随着设备不断缩小，铜CMP步骤数量增加。此外，铜CMP浆料可以实现高吞吐量和高平面度，这将为半导体制造商带来非常高的投资回报。纳米crc技术可以用不同的化学有效载荷浸渍纳米粒子，也可以使用不同的碱纳米粒子（如氧化铝）。该技术有潜力作为一个平台，为各种行业提供解决方案，既可以在CMP领域内用于其他CMP抛光步骤，也可以用于其他非CMP抛光过程，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.