Studies on Slurry Design Fundamentals for Advanced CMP Applications

New developments and device performance requirements in microelectronics industry add to the challenges in chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) process. One of the recently introduced materials is germanium which enables improved performance through better channel mobility in shallow trench isolation (STI) applications. This paper reports on the slurry design alternatives for Ge CMP with surfactant mediation to improve on the silica/germanium selectivity using colloidal silica slurry. In addition to the standard CMP tests to evaluate the material removal rates, atomic force microscopy (AFM) based wear tests were also conducted to evaluate single particle-surface interaction of the polishing system. Furthermore, nature of the surface oxide film of germanium was studied through contact angle measurements and surface roughness tested by AFM. It was observed that the CMP selectivity of the silica/germanium system and defectivity control were possible with a reasonable material removal rate value by using self-assembled structures of cationic surfactants.