Modeling chemical mechanical polishing with couple stress fluids

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is a manufacturing process used to achieve high levels of global and local planarity. Currently, the slurries used in CMP usually contain nanoscale particles to accelerate the removal ratio and to optimize the planarity, whose rheological properties can no longer be accurately modeled with Newtonian fluids. The Reynolds equation, including the couple stress effects, was derived in this paper. The equation describes the mechanism to solve the CMP lubrication equation with the couple stress effects. The effects on load and moments resulting from the various parameters, such as pivot height, roll angle, and pitch angle, were subsequently simulated. The results show that the couple stress can provide higher load and angular moments. This study sheds some lights into the mechanism of the CMP process.