公开(公告)号：US11577356B2

公开(公告)日：2023-02-14

申请号：US16554427

申请日：2019-08-28

申请人： Applied Materials, Inc.

发明人： Benjamin Cherian ,  Jun Qian ,  Nicholas Wiswell ,  Dominic J. Benvegnu ,  Boguslaw A. Swedek ,  Thomas H. Osterheld

IPC分类号： G06N3/02 ,  B24B37/013 ,  G06N3/084

摘要： During chemical mechanical polishing of a substrate, a signal value that depends on a thickness of a layer in a measurement spot on a substrate undergoing polishing is determined by a first in-situ monitoring system. An image of at least the measurement spot of the substrate is generated by a second in-situ imaging system. Machine vision processing, e.g., a convolutional neural network, is used to determine a characterizing value for the measurement spot based on the image. Then a measurement value is calculated based on both the characterizing value and the signal value.

公开(公告)号：US20230010759A1

公开(公告)日：2023-01-12

申请号：US17858011

申请日：2022-07-05

申请人： Applied Materials, Inc.

发明人： Jeonghoon Oh ,  Thomas H. Osterheld ,  Steven M. Zuniga

IPC分类号： B24B37/013 ,  B24B37/04 ,  H01L21/66

摘要： A chemical mechanical polishing apparatus includes a platen to support a polishing pad, a carrier head to hold a substrate against a polishing surface of the polishing pad, a motor to generate relative motion between the platen and the carrier head so as to polish an overlying layer on the substrate, an in-situ vibration monitoring system including a light source to emit a light beam and a sensor that receives a reflection of the light beam from a reflective surface of the polishing pad, and a controller configured to detect exposure of an underlying layer due to the polishing of the substrate based on measurements from the sensor of the in-situ pad vibration monitoring system.

公开(公告)号：US20220371153A1

公开(公告)日：2022-11-24

申请号：US17680779

申请日：2022-02-25

申请人： EBARA CORPORATION

发明人： Toshimitsu Sasaki ,  Keita Yagi ,  Yoichi Shiokawa

IPC分类号： B24B37/013 ,  B24B37/32 ,  B24B49/04 ,  B24B49/10 ,  B24B49/12 ,  B24B49/16

摘要： A polishing apparatus capable of obtaining a desired film thickness profile is disclosed. The polishing apparatus includes: a polishing unit; a film thickness measuring device for measuring a film thickness profile of a substrate; and a controller for controlling at least operations of the polishing unit and the film thickness measuring device. The controller stores in advance a response model which is created by taking into consideration variation in an amount of polishing between monitored areas of the substrate due to variations in a pressure of a pressurized fluid supplied to each of pressure chambers. Further, the controller obtains a film thickness profile of the substrate before polishing by use of a film thickness measuring device, and causes the substrate to be polished with an optimized polishing recipe created based on the response model and a target polishing amount, which is a difference between the film thickness profile of the substrate before polishing and the target film thickness of the substrate. A next substrate is polished with a new optimized polishing recipe which is created based on a target polishing amount of the next substrate and a response model corrected by use of the optimized polishing recipe and film thickness profiles of the substrate before and after polishing.

公开(公告)号：US20220371152A1

公开(公告)日：2022-11-24

申请号：US17325364

申请日：2021-05-20

申请人： Applied Materials, Inc.

发明人： Benjamin Cherian ,  Dominic J. Benvegnu ,  Harry Q. Lee

IPC分类号： B24B37/013 ,  H01L21/66 ,  H01L21/321 ,  H03H17/02

摘要： Determining a thickness of a layer on a wafer during a semiconductor process may include executing the process on the layer on the wafer; monitoring the wafer during the process with an in-situ spectrographic monitoring system to generate spectral data reflected from the wafer; applying a bandpass filter operation to the spectral data to generate filtered spectral data, where the bandpass filter may be configured to pass a frequency range corresponding to the layer on the wafer; and matching the filtered spectral data to a reference filtered spectral data, where the reference filtered spectral data may have been filtered using the bandpass filter operation, and the reference filtered spectral data may be associated with a thickness of the layer.

公开(公告)号：US20220297257A1

公开(公告)日：2022-09-22

申请号：US17206183

申请日：2021-03-19

申请人： Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited

发明人： Chun-Hsi HUANG

IPC分类号： B24B37/013 ,  H01L21/306 ,  H01L21/66

摘要： A substrate may be loaded onto a chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) apparatus, which includes a polishing pad and a wafer carrier that holds the substrate. The wafer carrier includes a backside plate, a wafer carrier frame, and at least one optical vertical displacement measurement unit that includes a respective laser source and a respective pixelated image sensor. A total reflection geometry is used to reflect a laser beam off a top surface of the backside plate. A polish rate or a polish thickness of a polished portion of the substrate may be measured at each location underneath at least one reflection point during the CMP process.

公开(公告)号：US20220281060A1

公开(公告)日：2022-09-08

申请号：US17677895

申请日：2022-02-22

申请人： Applied Materials, Inc.

发明人： Thomas Li ,  Benjamin Cherian

IPC分类号： B24B37/013 ,  B24B37/04 ,  H01L21/66

摘要： A method of polishing includes holding a substrate with a carrier head against a polishing surface of a polishing pad, generating relative motion between the substrate and polishing pad, applying a first pressure in a first cyclic waveform having a first frequency to a first region of the substrate, applying a second pressure in a second cyclic waveform having a different second frequency to a different second region of the substrate, during polishing of the substrate, monitoring the substrate with an in-situ motor torque monitoring system to generate a sequence of measured values, and determining a relative contribution to the sequence of measured values from the first region and second region based on distinguishing the first frequency from the second frequency.

公开(公告)号：US20220266414A1

公开(公告)日：2022-08-25

申请号：US17672857

申请日：2022-02-16

申请人： Kioxia Corporation

发明人： Tsutomu MIKI ,  Yuta SUZUKI ,  Taro TAKAHASHI ,  Katsuhide WATANABE

IPC分类号： B24B37/013 ,  B24B49/00 ,  B24B37/04

摘要： A method of accurately detecting an end point of substrate polishing using an acoustic sensor is disclosed.
The method includes: detecting an acoustic event occurring with polishing of a substrate and outputting the acoustic event as acoustic signals; generating power spectra from the acoustic signals, each of the power spectra indicating a spectrum of a sound-pressure level; generating a power spectrum map indicating a temporal change in power spectrum by arranging the power spectra in a time-series order; and detecting a polishing end point of the substrate based on a change in the sound-pressure level in the power spectrum map.

公开(公告)号：US11376704B2

公开(公告)日：2022-07-05

申请号：US16441904

申请日：2019-06-14

申请人： EBARA CORPORATION

发明人： Akira Nakamura

IPC分类号： B24B37/013 ,  B24B49/10 ,  B24B7/22 ,  B24B49/02 ,  B24B49/05 ,  G01B7/06 ,  B24B37/04

摘要： To specify a trajectory of an eddy current sensor provided on a polishing table of a substrate polishing apparatus, disclosed is a method of identifying a trajectory of an eddy current sensor as seen from a substrate in a substrate polishing apparatus having a polishing table and a polishing head. The method includes: obtaining a sensor output map as three-dimensional data; polishing the substrate; obtaining a profile of the real-time polishing signal as two-dimensional data; and extracting a trajectory having a profile most similar to the profile of the real-time polishing signal as two-dimensional data from the sensor output map as three-dimensional data and identifying the extracted trajectory as a trajectory of the eddy current sensor as seen from the substrate.

公开(公告)号：US11344990B2

公开(公告)日：2022-05-31

申请号：US16728251

申请日：2019-12-27

申请人： Seagate Technology LLC

发明人： Gary J. Kunkel ,  Zoran Jandric

IPC分类号： G11B5/31 ,  B24B37/013 ,  B24B37/04 ,  G11B5/60

摘要： An assembly for lapping multiple row bars, the assembly including a carrier having at least one carrier bond pad, multiple row bars adjacent to each other in a stack, wherein a first row bar of the stack is positioned closer to the carrier than any of the other multiple row bars of the stack and comprises at least one row bar bond pad, an electrical connection between at least one of the carrier bond pads and at least one of the row bar bond pads of the first row bar, and at least one electrical trace extending through at least two of the multiple row bars and electrically connected to at least the first row bar and one additional row bar of the stack. An outermost row bar of the stack includes an outer surface and at least one electronic lapping guide.

公开(公告)号：US11285578B2

公开(公告)日：2022-03-29

申请号：US16934626

申请日：2020-07-21

申请人： DISCO CORPORATION

发明人： Jiro Genozono

IPC分类号： B24B49/04 ,  B24B49/18 ,  B24B37/013 ,  B24B37/30

摘要： A height of an upper surface of a sub-chuck table is measured by a holding surface measuring unit in contact with the upper surface of the sub-chuck table. A height of a holding surface of a chuck table is measured by an upper surface height measuring unit in contact with the holding surface of the chuck table. A first difference between the height of the upper surface of the sub-chuck table and the height of the holding surface of the chuck table is calculated. A workpiece is held on the holding surface, and the height of the upper surface of the sub-chuck table is calculated again by the holding surface measuring unit. The upper surface height measuring unit is brought into contact with the upper surface of the workpiece by vertically moving it, and the height of the upper surface of the workpiece is measured.