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With the demand for manufacturing large (e.g., 450 mm) wafers, problems arise due to temperature increases associated with the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process. Various methods have been employed to stabilize the in-situ polishing temperature. The use of a high-temperature slurry can improve the removal rate, but a degradation in surface morphology occurs during the copper CMP procedure. To explain this mechanism, the effects of temperature on the slurry, CMP pad, and copper wafer were separately investigated. A temperature of approximately 40 °C was demonstrated to be a suitable choice when considering polishing efficiency and quality, thereby facilitating the rapid production of semiconductors. Particle aggregation was also observed with a rise in temperature. The work presented here may allow for a reduction in defects during low-hardness material polishing.

In this paper, tribological effects on the material removal rate (MRR) are investigated using two types of slurry abrasives (i.e., ceria and silica) and three types of pads. From a micro to macro viewpoint, the physico-chemical interaction between the pad-wafer interface and abrasive was studied based on multi-asperity contact. First, the relative contact pressure in high or low proportions among all asperities was calculated using a contact mechanics model. The results indicate that for the commercial slurry used in the semiconductor industry, relatively high contact pressure due to the asperities can be transferred to the ceria abrasives, and only a low contact pressure can be supported by these silica abrasives. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the two different slurry abrasives showed opposite behaviors according to the real contact area of the pad asperities. That is, as the pad texture changed from ‘Desired pad’ to ‘Smoothed pad’, the MRR of the ceria increased by 47%, while the MRR of the silica decreased 59%. Lastly, the Stribeck curve, which is suitable for the CMP process, was re-analyzed to clarify the abrasion mechanism under the pad asperity scale. The results showed that two-body abrasion may be maintained for the ceria CMP, and transition is possible from two-body to three-body abrasion at the silica CMP as the contact area increases. The present paper is expected to clarify the tribological mechanism of the oxide CMP and can provide further insight into optimizing and selecting consumables such as conditioner, pad, and slurry.