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

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目旨在开发微制造钻石化学机械抛光(CMP)垫调节剂，以取代传统的基于磨粒的调节剂，用于半导体和光学抛光。该项目将利用基于化学气相沉积(CVD)的超纳米晶体钻石技术来创建尺寸分布窄且形状可控的突起阵列，以充当磨粒。得到的整体式磨料表面将能够承受在存在化学机械抛光液的情况下的磨损和腐蚀，而不会损失磨料结构。该项目的更广泛/商业影响将是有可能提供新的化学机械抛光垫调节器，以满足32纳米节点半导体技术及更高级别的化学机械抛光工艺所需的精度。在化学机械抛光过程中，旋转垫与化学活性浆料相结合用于抛光表面。为了获得持续的性能，必须使用研磨垫调整剂定期重新调整衬垫。随着晶片级结构尺寸接近10-30纳米，目前的调节技术将不足以将抛光性能保持在规范范围内。在这个项目中，将开发具有工程形状和位置的突起阵列，以用作垫子调理剂。预计它们的性能将大大超过现有的空调，表现出更长的垫和空调寿命，更精细的抛光公差，更高的可靠性和可预测性，从而全面改善化学机械抛光性能。

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.