Polishing behaviors of single crystalline ceria abrasives on silicon dioxide and silicon nitride CMP

Myoung Hwan Oh, Rajiv K. Singh, Sushant Gupta, Seung Beom Cho

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Scopus citations

Abstract

The effects of single crystalline ceria (CeO2) abrasives in chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) slurries were investigated for silicon dioxide (SiO2) and silicon nitride (Si3N4) CMP process. The size of ceria abrasives was controlled by varying hydrothermal reaction conditions. Polishing removal rate was measured with four slurries, with different mean primary particle size of 62, 116, 163 and 232 nm. The polishing results showed that the single crystalline ceria abrasives were not easily broken-down by mechanical force during CMP process. It was found that the removal rate of oxide and nitride film strongly depend upon abrasive size, whereas the surface uniformity deteriorates as abrasive size increases. The observed polishing results confirmed that there exists an optimum abrasive size (163 nm) for maximum removal selectivity between oxide and nitride films. The polishing behavior of the single crystalline ceria abrasives was discussed in terms of morphological properties of the abrasive particle.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2633-2637
Number of pages5
JournalMicroelectronic Engineering
Volume87
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2010
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Abrasive
  • Ceria
  • Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP)
  • Removal selectivity

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