Challenges in CMP of New Materials from Carbon Nanotubes to Moisture Sensitive Surfaces

Will CMP process be still needed when carbon nanotube is implemented as interconnect material? How would a moisture sensitive surface be CMPed? As the future technology node approaches molecular scale, what would be the desired or functional characteristics of CMP consumables such as abrasive particles and pad surface? Questions like these represent some of the challenges faced by CMP community today. Possible answers to these questions might prepare us to meet the ever changing demand in future technology node implementation and embrace the tremendous new opportunities as CMP spread into other related technology areas that require surface preparation and fabrication. In this talk, a brief overview of these issues will be given from a chemist's point of view. For example, the discussion will be first focused on the functions of abrasive particles as their sizes loosely follow the trend of critical dimensions in the technology nodes. The discussion will then focus the strategies for CMP consumable development. More specifically, the slurry formulation processes for the CMP of chemically active surface such as copper, moisture sensitive materials such KDP, and chemically inert materials such as carbon nanotubes will be discussed. The potential challenges and opportunities for the CMP of these materials will be presented.