SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will investigate the use of in-situ, real-time film thickness monitoring and in-situ, real-time uniformity manipulation to improve process uniformity of Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP). Improved process uniformity will enhance the yield and effectiveness of the CMP process, which is increasingly used as a semiconductor planarization process. Phase I will develop a five-channel, real-time CMP active uniformity control system capable of compensating for center uniformity defects. Individual components will include: opto-electronics, software, five-channel optic access, and a back pressure system. Commercial application of the technology will focus on the CMP process used in semiconductor manufacturing. In addition, other potential applications include micromachining and optical circuit and fine optics production.

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project aims to improve the process uniformity of the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) planarization process. The proposed work centers on real-time process optimizations based on real-time in-situ thickness mapping during CMP planarization. The ability to improve the process uniformity is crucial to semiconductor manufacturers. CMP is a key semiconductor planarization process, and is utilized to address microlithography depth of focus problems and multilevel metallization problems. The CMP process is presently utilized by most state-of-the-art semiconductor production lines for interlevel dielectric (ILD) and shallow trench isolation (STI) planarization. The ability to improve CMP process uniformity will directly benefit semiconductor production yields