Long life mechanism on a flexible fiber conditioner in CMP

A flexible fiber conditioner was developed as a surface reference conditioning tool in CMP (Chemical Mechanical Planarization) process. The conditioner keeps contact force of each fiber edge constant to the pad by making use of fiber bending effect. In this paper, the running test was evaluated using the flexible fiber conditioner. The result indicated that the fiber conditioner achieved long life polishing rate and cutting rate in spite of round shape of fiber edge by fiber edge wear. The long life mechanism was verified in terms of a rake angle of a cutting edge of fiber edge. It was verified that the fiber conditioner continues to roughen the pad surface due to small negative rake angle and small cutting width.