Enhanced chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) performance of porous self-assembled spherical cerium oxide via RE(La/Pr/Nd) doping

[Display omitted] •A green and environmentally friendly porous spherical self-assembled cerium oxide particle doped with La, Pr, and Nd was synthesized.•The abrasives exhibit flexible and high chemical activity.•The Ce3+ content and oxygen vacancies of the La/Pr/Nd-doped CeO2 particles were analyzed using XPS, XANES, H2-TPR, and DFT.•The synthesized doped porous spherical self-assembled cerium oxide particles improved the removal rate and surface roughness of SiO2film. With the linewidth of integrated circuits has progressively narrowed, imposing higher demands on the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process. Cerium oxide nanoparticles are widely used as abrasives in CMP, with their physical structure and the surface content of Ce3+ ions and oxygen vacancies directly affecting their CMP performance. Here in, we synthesized La/Pr/Nd doped CeO2 with the porous self-assembled spherical structures. Doping with La/Pr/Nd reduced the grain size of cerium oxide, increased its specific surface area, decreased the pore size, and increased the pore volume. HR-TEM analysis shows that the porous self-assembled spherical CeO2 primarily exposes the (111) crystal facet. Additionally, the density functional theory (DFT) calculation, XPS, H2-TPR and XANES analyses shown that doping of La/Pr/Nd facilitated the formation of oxygen vacancies and increased the Ce3+ content on the (111) crystal facet of the CeO2. La atoms are more likely to stabilize on the CeO2 (111) surface compared to Pr and Nd atoms. The CMP results indicated that, The La-CeO2 exhibited a higher MRR of 338 ± 7.54 nm/min, which is a 35 % increase compared to p-CeO2, and achieved superior surface roughness (Ra = 0.201 ± 0.010 nm).