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US 11,931,860 B2Granted
Consumable part monitoring in chemical mechanical polisher
AssigneeApplied Materials, Inc.
InventorsThomas H. Osterheld, Dominic J. Benvegnu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A polishing apparatus includes a polishing station to hold a polishing pad, a carrier head to hold a substrate in contact with a polishing pad at the polishing station, a camera positioned to capture an image of a lower surface of a consumable part when the consumable part moves away from the polishing pad, and a controller configured to perform an image processing algorithm on the image to determine whether the consumable part is damaged. The consumable part can be a retaining ring on a carrier head, or a conditioner disk on a conditioner head.
Claims14
A polishing apparatus, comprising:
- a polishing station;
- a carrier head to hold a substrate in contact with a polishing pad at the polishing station;
- a conditioner head to hold a conditioner disk in contact with the polishing pad, a camera positioned to capture an image of a lower surface of the conditioner disk when the conditioner head moves away from the polishing pad, wherein the camera has a field of view that captures an entirety of the lower surface of the conditioner disk in a single image;
- and
- a controller configured to perform an image processing algorithm on the image to determine whether the conditioner disk is damaged.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.