Application of semiconductor IC fabrication techniques to the manufacturing of a conditioning head for pad conditioning during chemical-mechanical polish

摘要

A pad conditioning method and apparatus for chemical-mechanical polishing. A polishing pad (114) is attached to a platen (112) and used to polish a wafer (116). Rotating arm (118) positions the wafer (116) over the pad (114) and applies pressure. During wafer polishing particles build up on the polishing pad (114) reducing its effectiveness. Either during or in between wafer polishing (or both), conditioning head (122) is applied to pad (114) to remove the particles from pad (114) into the slurry (120). Conditioning head (122) comprises a semiconductor substrate (126) that is patterned and etched to fore a plurality of geometries (128) having a feature size on the order of polishing pad (114) cell size.