Hydrodynamic analysis of chemical mechanical polishing process

Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) refers to a material removal process done by rubbing a work piece against a polishing pad under load in the presence of chemically active abrasive containing slurry. The CMP process is a combination of chemical dissolution and mechanical action. The mechanical action of CMP involves hydrodynamic lubrication. The liquid slurry is trapped between the work piece (wafer) and pad (tooling) forming a lubricating film. For the first step to understand the mechanism of the CMP process, hydrodynamic analysis is done with a semiconductor wafer. Slurry pressure distribution, resultant forces and moments acting on the wafer are calculated in typical conditions of the wafer polishing, and then nominal clearance of the slurry film, roll and pitch angles at the steady state are obtained.