Sep 13 2005
Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials, CMP Technologies today introduced its VisionPad™ VP3100 polishing pad, the industry’s first polishing pad to combine the benefits of hard and soft pads for advanced CMP applications. The VisionPad VP3100 polishing pad provides customers with both excellent planarization capability and low defectivity during volume production of copper (Cu) wafers, enhancing throughput and reducing overall cost of ownership at the 65nm technology node.
The VisionPad VP3100 polishing pad is the first offering in the company’s new VisionPad CMP polishing pad series. The VisionPad VP3100 polishing pad’s proprietary polyurethane formulation provides a softer surface than a traditional hard pad to reduce defects while maintaining the rigidity needed to deliver good planarization during CMP in copper barrier processes. By using a new group of polymer chemistries, the advanced pad technology improves die yields through minimization of scratches and chatter marks across the wafer. The pad life is also equivalent to the industry standard hard pad and surpasses that of the industry standard soft pad. This unique blend serves to balance all platens, reducing down time and break-in wafers while improving process throughput. The VP3100 pad is currently in production at Asian foundries and a European device manufacturer and will be commercially available in January 2006.
“As customers move toward 65nm node device production, they’re experiencing yield losses from defects that were once tolerable. The VisionPad VP3100 polishing pad responds to this challenge by offering a low defectivity pad with superb planarization characteristics in the copper barrier step,” said Cathie Markham, vice president, Technology, Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials, CMP Technologies. “As a result of our improved manufacturing process, we are able to deliver a highly consistent product to our logic, IDM and foundry customers that allow them to integrate the VP3100 pad into existing processes with few modifications.”
Unlike soft pads typically used in this application, the VisionPad VP3100 CMP pad can also be conditioned. This allows for pad surface regeneration to achieve optimal polishing results that are constant throughout the pad’s life as well as from pad to pad. Although targeted for 65nm applications, the VP3100 CMP pad has the ability to backfill into current 130nm and 90nm processes.
http://www.rohmhaas.com/