Abstract
Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) is a universal and an important process of planarization in semi-conductor manufacturing, especially for the advanced processes with feature sizes at 0.25um or below. Pad conditioner is the key component of the whole CMP system, maintaining and offering a stable removal rate and planarization. If Pad conditioner doesn’t work satisfactorily, the wafer may be scratched, scrapped, and thus may cause great lost to the company. Focusing on this problem, our research provides efficient solutions based on TRIZ System Innovation Methods, such as Function Analysis (FA), Cause-Effect & Contradiction Chain Analysis (CECCA), Contradiction matrix and inventive principles, Parameter Deployment and Manipula-tion, Substitution-Addition- Subtraction Method, Function-Oriented Search, and Trimming, etc. The main contributions of this work are as follows. 1) Providing 15 solutions to the problem by applying the TRIZ System Innovation Methods, such as redesign of Pad conditioner and Pad. Those solutions can either improve the remove rate of the Pad conditioner, or make the Pad to remove the residue automatically. 2) Solving the problems of the Pad conditioner and then lower the defective rate. According to the scrap status of one of the semi-conductor 8-inch foundries in Taiwan, it is estimated that 1.0 million NT dollars can be saved each year in the future by our solutions. 3) This paper can also help other industries to better understand the TRIZ method, apply this method into their cases, and solve the problems efficiently.