CMP material development for ceria-based applications

New polyurethane pad materials have been developed for chemical mechanical planarization using ceria-based slurries. The optimization of material properties, tailored for effective texture generation with current conditioning schemes, has resulted in improvements in both removal rate stability and defectivity versus conventional CMP pads. Further developments in polymer engineering have led to the demonstration of new polyurethane materials exhibiting up to 30% removal rate increase and lower defectivity versus the industry standard pad in ceria applications.