Principal Investigator Jung-Hoon Chun
Chemical-Mechanical Planarization (CMP) is a critical process in the manufacture of high-performance, ultra-large-scale-integrated (ULSI) electronics. CMP involves two components, a chemical element and a mechanical element. The chemical component of the CMP process is the reaction of the wafer surface with slurry chemicals to form a soft layer, and the mechanical component is the removal of the softened surface by hard abrasive particles in the slurry. The CMP Group specifically studies copper (Cu) CMP which involves removing excess, deposited Cu as a result of the damascene Cu metallization process. Ideally, the goal of CMP is the complete removal of excess Cu, leaving a planar surface for the deposition of the next oxide layer. In practice, the process is far from ideal due to interactions from a multitude of process variables. As the semiconductor industry moves towards the next generation of semiconductors, with features of finer resolution and materials with lower dielectric constants, the demand to understand and control the CMP process will become greater than ever. The CMP Group has recently developed a comprehensive, tribological Cu CMP model to minimize dishing and erosion. Current research involves the development of a novel CMP architecture to experimentally validate the multi-scale model as well as the modeling of nano-scale scratching of the barrier layer during CMP.