Advanced Slurry Formulations for New Generation Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) Applications

Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) is widely used to ensure planarity of metal and dielectric surfaces to enable photolithography and hence multilevel metallization in microelectronics manufacturing. The aim of this study is to establish a fundamental understanding on the dynamic growth of nano-scale protective oxide thin films during CMP to enable the selection of proper oxidizer concentrations for slurry formulations. Tungsten was selected as the model metal film to study the formation of these metal oxide films in various oxidizers and Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) was used to measure the surface roughness of the samples conditioned in the oxidizer environment before and after the CMP was conducted. The affect of surface roughness on wettability of the surfaces were also studied through contact angle measurements on the treated tungsten films. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy with Attenuated Total Reflectance FTIR/ATR technique in combination with the X-Ray Reflectivity (XRR) were utilized to determine the thicknesses of the oxidized nano films on the tungsten surface. The results were evaluated through the material removal responses reported in the literature for the W-CMP in addition to the comparison of the Pilling-Bedworth ratios of the oxidized nano films to determine the ability of the created oxide film as a self-protective oxide.