Development of data logging system for chemical mechanical polishing and its application for process control

Chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) has been widely used in semiconductor production for a certain length period, but the process control of CMP still has a number of issues to be resolved. The process control of CMP has not been well established. A good process model is essential to a successful CMP integration into mass production. This paper describes the development of a data logging network system for a CMP process. This system helps engineers build proper process control models. This system consists of the following entities: CMP process equipment, several analog/digital I/O devices built into the equipment, film thickness and scratch measurement instrument, particle measurement facility, and an infrared thermometer. All of these are connected with a local area network.