Porous chemical mechanical polishing pads

Abstract

Implementations disclosed herein generally relate to polishing articles and methods for manufacturing polishing articles used in polishing processes. More specifically, implementations disclosed herein relate to porous polishing pads produced by processes that yield improved polishing pad properties and performance, including tunable performance. Additive manufacturing processes, such as three-dimensional printing processes provides the ability to make porous polishing pads with unique properties and attributes.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a divisional of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15 / 394,044, filed Dec. 29, 2016, which claims the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 62 / 280,537, filed Jan. 19, 2016, the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 62 / 331,234, filed May 3, 2016, and the benefit of U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 62 / 380,015, filed Aug. 26, 2016. The aforementioned related patent applications are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.BACKGROUNDField[0002]Implementations disclosed herein generally relate to polishing articles and methods for manufacturing polishing articles used in polishing processes. More specifically, implementations disclosed herein relate to porous polishing pads produced by processes that yield improved polishing pad properties and performance, including tunable performance.Description of the Related Art[0003]Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0009]In another implementation, a composition for forming a porous polishing pad is provided. In another implementation, a porous polishing pad is provided. The porous polishing pad is formed from a resin precursor composition comprising a first resin precursor component that comprises a multifunctional acrylate oligomer, a second resin precursor component that comprises a multifunctional acrylate monomer, a surfactant and a porosity-forming agent. The first precursor formulation has a first viscosity that enables the first precursor formulation to be dispensed to form a portion of the polishing article by use of an additive manufacturing process.

[0012]In one implementation, the porosity-forming agent contains ionic surfactants, glycols, or mixtures thereof. The ionic surfactants include, for example, ammonium-based salts. Exemplary salts include tetrabutylammonium tetrabutylborate, tetrafluoroborate, hexafluorophosphate, tetrabutylammonium benzoate, or combinations thereof. Exemplary glycols include diethylene glycol and propylene glycol. This non-reactive ionic surfactant / glycol mixture is dispersed into photo-curable ink formulations. After curing, nano-sized and micro-sized mixture drops are trapped in the cured materials. During CMP polishing, mixture drops dissolve into the polishing slurry leaving porous features in the CMP surface. This benefits pad surface interaction with slurry and slurry nanoparticle loading on pads; and in turn, enhances polishing removing rates and reduces the wafer-to-wafer removing rate deviation. Introduction of cationic materials can also bond to the polymer chain by Norrish Type II reactions and further enhancing the positive zeta potential of the pad.

[0015]In yet another implementation, a resin precursor composition is provided. The resin precursor composition comprises a first precursor formulation. The first precursor composition comprises a first resin precursor component that comprises a multifunctional acrylate oligomer, a second resin precursor component that comprises a multifunctional acrylate monomer, a surfactant and water. The first resin precursor formulation has a viscosity that enables the first precursor formulation to be dispensed to form a portion of a polishing article by use of an additive manufacturing process.

Problems solved by technology

Polishing pads made of harder materials often exhibit high removal rates and have long useful pad life, but undesirably tend to form numerous scratches on the substrate being polished.

Polishing pads made of softer materials exhibit low scratching of substrates, but tend to exhibit lower removal rates and have shorter useful pad life.

These methods of manufacturing polishing pads are expensive and time consuming, and often yield non-uniform polishing results due to the difficulties in the production and control of the dimensions of the pad surface features.

Non-uniformity has become increasingly significant as the dimensions of IC devices and feature sizes continue to shrink.

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