A 2-DIMENSIONAL PROCESS MODEL FOR CHEMIMECHANICAL POLISH PLANARIZATION

Recently, chemimechanical polish (CMP) has emerged as a new element in very large scale integrated process technology, allowing the fabrication of novel structures and devices which would not have been possible using more conventional techniques. In this work, a phenomenological model is presented which describes the CMP process. This model allows quantitative predictions to be made of both relative and absolute polish rates of arrays of features with different sizes and pattern densities. Detailed comparisons with experimental data demonstrate the validity of the model over a wide range of pattern factors.