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.