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The performance of chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) was determined by the morphological characteristics of the abrasive particle. In this study, the shape of the aggregate of fumed silica was confirmed by a method of characterizing the morphology of the particles using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Each aggregate was classified into four types—linear, branched, ellipsoidal, and spheroidal—and the shape distribution of a fumed-silica slurry was investigated with different specific surface areas. The CMP performance of fumed silica slurries at 90 m2/g with numerous linear-shaped aggregates and 400 m2/g with the highest portion of spheroidal aggregates were compared to that of colloidal silica slurry. A model for the effects of bumpy abrasives on CMP explained the reason for this result by using penetration depth and MRR with various numbers of contact bumps. Furthermore, a mixture of spherical and non-spherical abrasives in a ratio of 4:1 exhibited an improved CMP performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of diamond grit during chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process. CMP is the most important for planarization of wafer surface in semiconductor manufacturing. During polishing process, the wafer surface and the pad are contacted with the slurry. There are various contact area, which are wafer-pad aperture and conditioner-pad aperture, and so on. Between diamond grits and pad, those contacts can affect wafer polishing process. Conditioner of CMP dresses pad surface to maintain CMP pad surface constant. Otherwise, CMP pad will be degraded out quickly after several wafer process. Shape of diamond pattern and their effect on pad property were reported, but there are no researchers related novel diamond conditioner. In this study, we experiment CMP process by using different conditioners and analyze wafer polishing property as conditions.