Editors' Choice—Efficiency of a CMP Pad at Removing Protective Material from Copper during CMP

Abstract

Copper CMP is a corrosion-wear process, in which mechanical and chemical-electrochemical phenomena interact synergistically. Existing models generally treat copper CMP as a corrosion enhanced wear process. However, the underlying mechanisms suggest that copper CMP would be better modeled as a wear enhanced corrosion process, where intermittent asperity/abrasive action enhances the local...