Effects of chemical reaction on the polishing rate and surface planarity in the copper CMP

Abstract

Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) is the polishing process enabled by both chemical and mechanical actions. CMP is used in the fabrication process of the integrated circuits to achieve adequate planarity necessary for stringent photolithography depth of focus requirements. And recently copper is preferred in the metallization process because of its low resistivity. We have studied the effects of chemical reaction on the polishing rate and surface planarity in copper CMP by means of numerical simulation solving Navier-Stokes equation and copper diffusion equation. We have performed pore-scale simulation and integrated the results over all the pores underneath the wafer surface to calculate the macroscopic material removal rate. The mechanical abrasion effect was not included in our study and we concentrated our focus on the transport phenomena occurring in a single pore. We have observed the effects of several parameters such as concentration of chemical additives, relative velocity of the wafer, slurry film thickness or aspect ratio of the pore on the copper removal rate and the surface planarity. We observed that when the chemical reaction was rate-limiting step, the results of simulation matched well with the experimental data.