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US 2010/0062684 A1Published application
Polishing system with in-line and in-situ metrology
AssigneeApplied Materials, Inc.
InventorsBoguslaw A. Swedek, Bret W. Adams, Sanjay Rajaram, David A. Chan, Manoocher Birang
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Abstract
A computer-implemented method for process control in chemical mechanical polishing in which an initial pre-polishing thickness of a substrate is measured at a metrology station, a parameter of an endpoint algorithm is determined from the initial thickness of the substrate, a substrates is polished at a polishing station, and polishing stops when an endpoint criterion is detected using the endpoint algorithm.
Claims4
A computer-implemented method for process control in chemical mechanical polishing, comprising:
- polishing a monitor substrate;
- monitoring the monitor substrate in-situ during the polishing step to determine a lot representative removal rate;
- measuring an initial substrate thickness of a product substrate at a metrology station wherein the monitor substrate and the product substrate are from the lot;
- calculating an endpoint time from the initial substrate thickness and the lot representative removal rate;
- polishing the product substrate;
- and
- stopping polishing of the product substrate at the endpoint time.
4 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.