Customer Application Brief Electronics Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) Slurry Manufacturing

Introduction The Chemical Mechanical Planarization (CMP) process plays a key role in the manufacture of data storage, video display panels, and semiconductor chips. The process combines the chemical (acidic or basic) effect of the slurry, which contains micro-abrasives with the mechanical effect provided by polishing to reduce the topography on the wafer or rigid disk substrate. The process for manufacturing integrated circuits (IC) uses a “tool” with a rotating wafer carrier (single or multi-head) and a polishing pad placed on a rotating platen. Wafers are held in the carrier and pressed against the polishing pad onto which chemical abrasive polishing slurry is dispensed (Figure 1).