Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) has become one of the most critical processes in semiconductor device fabrication to achieve global planarization. To achieve an efficient global planarization for device node dimensions of less than 32 nm, a comprehensive understanding of the physical, chemical, and tribo-mechanical/chemical action at the interface between the pad and wafer in the presence of a slurry medium is essential. During the CMP process, some issues such as film delamination, s...

For several decades, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) has been the most widely used planarization method in integrated circuits manufacturing. The final polishing results are affected by many factors related to the carrier structure, the polishing pad, the slurry, and the process parameters. As both chemical and mechanical actions affect the effectiveness of CMP, and these actions are themselves affected by many factors, the CMP mechanism is complex and has been a hot research area for man...

Continued reduction in feature dimension in integrated circuits demands high degree of flatness after chemical mechanical polishing. Here we report using new yttrium oxide (Y₂O₃) nanosheets as slurry abrasives for chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) of copper. Results showed that the global planarization was improved by 30% using a slurry containing Y₂O₃ nanosheets in comparison with a standard industrial slurry. During CMP, the two-dimensional ...

Since the beginning of the systematic study of wear, many classification schemes have been devised. However, though covering the whole field in sum, they stay only loosely connected to each other and do not build a complete general picture. To this end, here we try to combine and integrate existing approaches into a general simple scheme unifying known wear types into a consistent system. The suggested scheme is based on three classifying criterions answering the questions “why”, “how” and “w...

The mechanical and tribological properties of epoxy composites modified with microencapsulated wax lubricant and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were investigated. The increased soft microcapsules embedded in the epoxy matrices were responsible for the reduced micro-hardness and Young’s modulus of the epoxy composites. It was found that the friction of the epoxy composites greatly decreased with increased microcapsule content due to combined lubricating effects of the both wax lubrican...

Fluorine-incorporated hydrogenated fullerene-like nanostructure amorphous carbon films (F-FLC) were synthesized by employing the direct current plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (dc-PECVD) technique using a mixture of methane (CH₄), tetra-fluoromethane (CF₄), and hydrogen (H₂) as the working gases. The effect of the fluorine content on the bonding structure, surface roughness, hydrophobic, mechanical, and tribological properties of the films was system...

The effect of tert-butyl hydroperoxide-sodium pyrosulfite ((CH₃)₃COOH-Na₂S₂O₅) as an initiator system in H₂O₂-based slurry was investigated for the abrasive-free polishing (AFP) of a hard disk substrate. The polishing results show that the H₂O₂-C₄H₁₀O₂-Na₂S₂O₅ slurry exhibits a material removal rate (MRR) that is nearly 5 t...