Modeling of step height reduction with temperature function in copper CMP

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is a global planarization process that effectively reduces the step height of patterns. Conventional mathematical models for predicting step height reduction in oxide CMP have been successful; however, a relatively large error is obtained when applied to copper CMP because of the effects of chemical factors on copper removal rate. This study focuses on temperature as a parameter and develops a modified semi-empirical model that considers its effects. The temperature function was obtained using experiments that measured the copper etching and removal amounts according to the temperature. The developed copper model had an error rate of less than 10 %, whereas the oxide model had an error rate of approximately 30 %, indicating that the model with temperature consideration is more effective in predicting copper CMP results.