Tang 9704031 This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project aims to improve the process uniformity of the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) planarization process. The proposed work centers on real-time process optimizations based on real-time in-situ thickness mapping during CMP planarization. The ability to improve the process uniformity is crucial to semiconductor manufacturers. CMP is a key semiconductor planarization process, and is utilized to address microlithography depth of focus problems and multilevel metallization problems. The CMP process is presently utilized by most state-of-the-art semiconductor production lines for interlevel dielectric (ILD) and shallow trench isolation (STI) planarization. The ability to improve CMP process uniformity will directly benefit semiconductor production yields. p:sbiryhashimiabstracts9704031.doc
