Process stability and tool capacity improvement with 150mm Profiler and 200mm contour heads

This paper describes the improvement obtained when using an Applied Materials Mirra CMP system equipped with 150mm Titan Profiler or 200mm Titan Contour wafer-carrier heads, versus a polisher with a basic carrier. The wafer-edge profiles and polish-rate stability were compared between the polishers using different wafer-carrier heads. The polisher usage/capacity and CMP cycle time in production were also compared. Results show that the process stability with 150mm Profiler and 200mm Contour wafer-carrier heads makes daily process qualification unnecessary, and enables the elimination of the time-consuming look-ahead (L/A) step for each product lot. As a result, the polisher usage and CMP capacity was greatly improved to meet the requirement of high volume Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) production.